Father And Son Reunion - Cayos Cochinos Trip

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terrydarc

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Woohoo!
At last report our 60 year old newbie diver and his hotshot 25 year old son were about ready to venture off, in the face of tropical storm Chantal, to Central America in search of scuba BOW certs. Now the trip is over, the log book is filled out - sort of anyway. Story continues...

Cast of characters: Terry: aging programmer/father with recent Intro to Diving in Roatan.

Chris: 25 years old son, also Intro 4 years ago in Oz.

Roger: 40'ish divemaster and all around fixit man for anything more techical than a broom at PBR.

Island Location: Plantation Beach Resort Cayos Cochinos, remote Honduran resort, strangely deserted when our characters arrive. Trees densly covering the islands looking a lot like broccoli with the odd palm tree spiked in here and there. Small coves on the west side of Cochino Grande and PBR taking one completely. White sand beaches and a pier reching out to accept the aging, but sturdy 35' V-8 diesel dive boat/transport, Wahoo III.

Plantation Beach Resort: Happily the PBR compressor is way, way up the hill along with the generator which runs the fans (no A/C) and 24 volt night lights and fans on the beds. Glad for those! Water system is also spring fed, but bottled to drink and cook with. Food uniformly excellent, but we did nearly run them out by staying another 4 days, pinning Roger and resupply down until we had sprite and Salva-vidas beer on tap to drink. Nice clean, screened wooden bungalows, two story with real hot water from gas heaters in the showers. Stone floors down below and bedrooms up the steep stairs.

Entertainment: Aside from diving an extensive, new video collection of maybe 500 movies plus 1st 8 episodes of the Sopranos. The bar open nightly or pour your own. Music system and CD's. Couple other people stopping off from their sailboats, but basically isolated. Honduran staff to practice your Spanish on. Paperback books to read - we brought out own.

Weather: Bright blue skies, fleecy white cloads the entire stay except two rain showers - once drenching us in a open boat, but what the heck? Chantal? What's that? 85 degrees in the day, 78-80 at night and HUMID. Sand flies ever present when the wind is less than 10 knots.

Water: 82 degrees (yeah!), mostly smooth and fair to good visibility - 40' to 100', depending on how you cared to measure it: seeing clearly or seeing dimly.

Excursion dates: 8/22/01 through 9/1/01.

Trip down: After nearly not getting out of San Francico on Taca Air because of weather in San Francisco and NOT in Honduras, we limped in several hours late to La Ceiba on the coast, 22 miles from our final destination - totally bushed and wigged out. I asked the desk to call Plantation Beach to say we wanted to be picked up at the Hotel Gran Paris (recommeded) instead of the airport next morning for our boatride to PBR. Got to the room and our phone rang - this was Roger, divemaster in the room next door happy that he didn't need to go to the airport to find us. An omen...

Trip Out To Cayos: Next morning we chugged out in the Wahoo III to Cayo Grande where PBR is located 2 hours, 20 miles or so. PBR is grandfathered in, since the rest of the 15 or so little islands around are in a nature preserve. If you want to dive Cayos, you get PBR or bring your own dive boat as both the Agressor IV and Anthony's Key did during our stay. Roger remarked that if both AKR and Agressor IV were diving in the Cayos, that ought to tell you something.

Study Plan: We read PADI BOW modules 1-4 for two solid days, taking the brutally easy multi-guess tests. Yeech!!! Chris score 100% on all tests, dad misses two questions. We tool around snorkeling for a couple hours out front day two when it's too choppy to do the OW dives.

Parenthetical Remark: (must say the required 200m swim and 10 minute float were the hardest thing we did all week). Chris with his contact lenses didn't appreciate the repeated mask flooding/mask clearing bits, but into each life some rain must fall or salt water wash in...

Finally we compress the 4 "confined water" dives into two and get into the OW diving - all off the Wahoo III. Nice sandy beach and jumping off the pier, wading in or sitting on the concrete platform just in front of the dive shop for the "confined" dives.

OW1 - 8/25: 44', 34 minutes at Hidden Valley Reef. The tired diver drag (rescue manuver) is the second hardest thing all week and it's repeated later. Nice dive, similar to Roatan that I recall from 4 months earlier.

OW2 - 8/26: 57', 38 minutes at Lion's Head (cabeza de leon). removing and replacing regulator, reg recovery, and all those fun little learning things that give you more and more confidence that being underwater is not that bad - fun actually.

OW3 - 8/26: 45', 33 minutes also at Lion's head after 25 minute surface interval. More excercises including compass navigation. No problems!

OW4 - 8/26: 44', 35 minutes, 30/30 Point. After a 3 hour lunch break we are done with the required dives. No more mask flooding which makes Chris happy. Nor does dad have to lug large son about in tired diver tow. Fun ahead!

On the rec portions of these dives we get to tool around with Roger and see fish, coral as well as the usual cast of characters. No divers except at a distance. Just us at PBR with the full attention of the divemaster. Sweet! Later that day we take the final written exam. Hotshot finally misses one question eliminating the perfect record and dad misses 3. We are C card cert'ed and stoked but I think not overconfident. More later including pictures (crossing my fingers).
Terry
 
Congrat's to you and your son ! Thanks for the trip report, It sounds like a place I would like (it also sounds like a place my wife wouldn't like...no shopping).

Looking forward to those pictures.

Tavi
 
Terrydarc

I just now noticed that you posted your dive trip report. It sounds like you had a great time. A father/son diving expedition sounds cool. I would like to go diving with my dad sometime. He told of a time when he was just out of the army, that he bought a scuba setup in a pawnshop and did a little diving(in the days before cert cards). I don't know if I could get him to get certified now or not. Anyhows, sounds like your trip went well. One of these days I plan to dive Honduras myself. It sounds like some excellent diving. Great trip report!
 
If you don't mind me asking, how much did the trip cost? (Total, air, extras....)

TIA.
 
The flight out of SFO was about $550 and the stay for 1 week in Cayos was $600, pretty much inclusive of food 3x a day (excellent, too), diving rental and three tanks a day air, boat out to wherever we wanted to dive and nice cabins with a downstairs with stone floor (nice when your all sandy and dirty) and upstairs sleeping. $80 r/t for the boatride out, and taxi to/from the hotel in La Ceiba. Highly recommend is the hotel Gran Paris, the best in town.

Electricity was battery fan and light after 9 or 10 pm, gas heated showers (hot!), clean, crisp linens, screened window, but no AC. I'd recommend the place for a wide variety of diving - we came nowhere near seeing everything in the 10 days we were there. Extra days were $85 as I recall. Nice, but not luxurious accomodations and a huge video library of new movies. Our $60 bar bill was the only extra and that was kid and me with a beer or two after diving. Two dives in the morning (the best time) and one in the PM with a night dive.

It's not only not a place with shopping, there is absolutely no place to spend money (except the bar). Not even a t-shirt, for goodness sake!

The two certs were $300 for the BOW and a puny $75 each for the AOW. I'm now in possesion of two great looking (other than my photo) new PADI cards.

The pix we took from the Reefmaster RC are scanned in and waiting for me to upload (once I figure out the free hosting). Roger the divemaster is aces.

Diving father and son is highly recommended. Wish I coulda done something similiar with my dad when he was alive, though we did get him and Mom to go to Europe for a couple weeks, so I'm not consumed with guilt. However, don't wait tooooo long if you got a parent to have a good time with! Chris and I certainly did.
Terry
 
Thanks a lot. It sounds like a real "get-a-way" type trip. The wife and I are doing the exact opposite end of the spectrum next month: Sandals all inclusive in Jamaica. I expect lots of (non-diving) activity, lots of people, mediocre diving and plenty of ways to spend extra money. What you've describe sounds like a great option for our next trip south (and a lot cheaper...).

BTW, I enjoyed your trip report.. glad to her you and your son enjoyed yourselves.
 
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