What a bummer! Sounds like a lot more effort and inconvenience than it was worth.
Your right. Any one of the things on it's own was easy enough to deal with even most of the items are bearable if the diving is spectacular enough but it just isn't in comparison to places like Belize or Coz. If we were ever to return which I do not see happening I would never dive a cattle boat again so we would have to find another operation to go with.
Funny thing you mentioned about having headaches while diving. I experienced the same problem during my first dive, and all subsequent dives.
It was not only me either. Toward the end of the week there were several others also including the 12y/o. I told them about it so hopefully they check on it. I do not think it is a wide spread thing but I do think some of the tanks get effected when the boats are being warmed up in the morning when the wind is just right. Of course this is just my humble opinion.
Daren is one heck of a DM.
I couldn't agree more, he saw what was going on and did everything he could to accommodate but he had his hands full babysitting most of the dives. You can only do so much with one in tow.
I'm still fighting for a refund from SOSA Air. They (the agents for FI who set up reservations for the resort and flights) sent me the hand written tickets, which had the wrong return flight times on them.
I found the puddle jumpers to be informal as best. It seems they kind of made the rules up as they went. It was SOSA who finally got us to the Island so we are appreciative of that because we were not looking to waste another day or have to spend the night.
We took the bus from FI to the airport, with plenty of time to spare, only to find out that our plane had left more than an hour earlier. Naturally, they didn't have another flight for several hours, which would mean that we would miss all of our connecting flights.
We were told to check with TACA Air to see if they had seats available (to La Ciebre (sp?). They were full so we had to wait and see if there were any no-shows.
As luck would have it, two seats opened up and we happily paid for them. However, they were not able to guarantee a flight from La Ciebre to San Pedro Sula. We took our chances and flew with TACA.
Yep, you guessed it...no seats available in SPS. The nice people at SOSA made several phone calls (because they knew they had made an error on our tickets) to our booking agent and "made them feel really bad". So SOSA chartered us a private jet......and by private jet I mean probably the first ever built two seater Cesna.....that I had to hold the door closed on for the entire flight after I leaned on it on the taxiway and it opened.[/QUOTE]Sounds like the adventure we had. I saw the plane you are speaking of. At one point we were going to charter it but it would have taken 3 trips to get all of us and our luggage to the island.
We made the rest of our flights, but SOSA is refusing to refund our TACA flight citing: "We went well above and beyond the call of duty by chartering you a private flight".
Yea....BS. Had they written the correct time on the tickets to begin with, there wouldn't be an issue. Had we not caught the flight with TACA, they would be paying for all of our missed flights.
I figured that SASO was going to give us the runaround, so while we were at the airport in Roatan I had them give me a copy of their flight plans. This clearly demonstrates their error.
When we returned, I called the booking agent for FI and explained the problem. He said he would take care of it. Two weeks passed and I hadn't heard from him, so I called. That's when I found out that nothing was going to be done about it. I told him that I would just contact my credit card company to have the amount deducted. That's when he got irrate. He said that he would be talking to the airline rep at DEMA about it and would get back to me.
Yep, you guessed it....he hasn't got back to me. I'm assuming that he's trying to drag this out until the 60 day mark has passed. Unbenounced to him, I've taken the preemptive strike by calling my credit card company.
[/QUOTE]I think the people there run by their own rules so calling the CC company was really your only option. Good luck with that. We had flight insurance which is going to cover all of our extra expenses including the day of diving we missed but it is not really about the money. This is a once a year thing for us and most have a tough time getting a week off because of our jobs so we like to take full advantage of that time off. In the end we were all together and had a good time. I hope I did not sound too negative in my report. I tried to write it unbiased as I could but I must admit that is kind of tough to do while I was sitting there scratching myself to death from the scabies, and having to sanitize everything in the house and from the trip.
Regards
