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The trail/road does get muddy after a rain, but so does the main street (which is about 1/3 paved and soon will be completely paved).
You have learned to speak "Bay Islands". Your use of the word "soon" is masterful.
We were scheduled to dive on the afternoon we arrived and the entire week with a dive center and we were wanting to do the shark dive. Our first dive was on Monday afternoon the day we arrived.
A lot of folks want to dive the day they arrive. Many people agree that this is a bad idea due to the inherent dehydration of air travel.
.... a dive master didn't give my wife enough weight, and he liked to go slow so the group was going to go slow.
You wife has to "take" the weight. Dive Masters can not be relied upon to "give" you weight. Doing the perfunctory self-administered in-water weighting test is a requirement and would obviate this issue.
Basically because he was the "Dive Master" we were going to do it his way, not the paying customers way....and he liked to go slow so the group was going to go slow.
Yes, that's the way it works. Check out many previous threads here and you'll find that going slow is the advisable naturalist method. The DM sets the pace, if you wish to stay with him (which, in the Naturalist angle, is advisable). CoCoLobo runs a number of cruise ship divers through their boats, so the DMs are pretty well loaded for bear.
Never expect any specific act or service from any professional in SCUBA unless you have made specific agreements and understandings before chartering.
As soon as we submerged she was having trouble descending. I stopped to take a few pictures....About five minutes later while she was trying to go deeper he grabbed her again and screamed at her underwater to stay calm. I could tell he was also trying to tell her to breath out to descend. After this I stopped taking pictures and stayed at her side. We were about ten feet above everyone else in the group because she couldn't descend.
Staying with a distressed buddy and skipping the pix is a good idea. Make a note to skip taking the camera on the first dive of the week, if not for yourself, then do it in case you have to assist your buddy. Once a diver achieves the desirable state of neutral buoyancy, being forced into "staying ten feet above" doesn't occur.
He came back over to her again, grabbed her spun her to face him and screamed at her underwater again. Then he spun her around and put a weight on her the BC tank strap. She finally was able to descend without a problem.
I personally slip the weight into the diver's BC. The only reason to go through the process to put a weight on a tank strap is that she needed a "keel weight" or an advanced form of a weight distribution issue~ not only common in females but something the attuned DM can see easily. I have never heard anyone manage to communicate effectively u/w by whispering, but due to her (and yours by osmosis) already distressed situation, her perception was understandably so.
.... a fifteen year old girl in our group having trouble with her regulator ..... Fortunately she was able to fix the problem.
When a fifteen year old girl can fix a regulator problem, that's a very cool thing~ or it wasn't much of a problem.
Things were fine for a little while until my wife had to start struggling to stay at the current depth. He came back over again, and again grabbed her spun her towards him and screamed at her underwater again. I noticed at this point the weight was no longer on the strap around the tank (hence her problem staying and struggle to stay with the group) he put a weight on the tank again acted like it was her fault.
Fault is hard to convey underwater. Okay, so anyway, he produced another few pound of lead right there out of the blue as her tank became more buoyant. Did her buddy double check the knot this time around?
We tried to do the shark dive while there, but were unable to. Aparently the people that schedule it are real flaky. You can not schedule it yourself, you have to do it through the dive shop. Our dive shop kept trying to schedule it for us, but kept getting the run around. Another couple we met diving with another shop had the same problem (I wonder if the save openings for the bigger dive shop/resorts on the island and fill in from the smaller operations if needed?).
You can always make your own reservations. The shop you are using can do this for you as well since they like to hire out their company van to transport you. Due to the very good possibility of extreme currents in the Shark dive site (due to the approaching storm, Ernesto), possibly the dive shop looked at buoyancy challenges that would present and made a decision in that way. The Shark dive is a relatively easy dive, but there is absolutely no window for assistance or gear adjustments when the currents are stiff.
Next time I will be sure to exchange in to local currency before we go and I will take a lot of small bills. Nobody ever has change!!!! According to a few locals this is a common problem. If you pull US money out of the ATM's they will dispense $50 bills.
That's another oft discussed topic here, but you'll also learn that changing for Lempiras is also a bad idea for the casual weeklong visitor. Take maybe $200 broken into $1, $5 and a very few $10. The rest in $20, skip the $50, and only enough $100 to pay off larger bills. Always clean, un-torn notes.
Even after an initial rough ride, I'm glad that you saw through the obstacles and will consider a return trip. I looked at your previous posts and see that your dive buddy is very new to salt water diving, so the notes that she has made in her log book regarding pounds of lead will make the most of this a non-issue in the future.