Roatan Numero Tres

Well, we thought we´d stop diving and leave Roatan, but after one fun dive and three days out of the ocean we were convinced to take the PADI Advanced Open Water class. We found a really great, laid back dive shop called Tyll´s through meeting one of the instructors over lunch at our favorite restaurant (a little two table place with daily lunch specials for about 3 bucks called the Galley). The Advanced class allowed us to expand our training in 5 specialties. We chose to do a night dive, a wreck dive, a deep dive, a dive called peak performance bouyancy and underwater navigation. Details! The night dive was incredible. We got out to the boat around sunset, and cruised out to our dive sight where the mooring was mysteriously missing. No problem, the captain can keep the boat in the same place. As we readied our gear, the O-ring on Dirk´s tank blew. That´s the connection between the piece you breath out of (regulator) and the air tank. Our instructor replaced it twice with no luck. They were prepared with an extra tank on board, so we switched the gear around and got into the water with no further mishaps. It did make for a nervous start to what was the most intimidating dive. By the time were underwater, it was completely dark out and all that we could see was whatever we shone our torch on. The advantage of a night dive is seeing the nocturnal creatures and also seeing the true colors of the corals with the beam of your light. We saw two octopus, (Dirk spotted them both) a couple of lobsters, fish sleeping on rocks (!) a drum fish and lots of strange little blinking night swimmers. The best part by far was the phosphorescence. At the end of the dive, we turned our lights off and waited for our eyes to adjust. As we waited, more and more lights appeared in the water, and as I moved my hands in front of my face, little lights appeared in the disturbed water like handfulls of stars. A unique occurence in Roatan is called the String of Pearls and is a line of lights one above the other that slowly rise around you. Nobody knows what they are. It was incredible to sit at the bottom of the dark ocean and see all the lights around us from all the little animals living down there. My favorite part of diving is floating amongst the schools of fish. On our last dive, we went to a wall at the end of the island called West End Wall where we swam with a huge school of some of my favorite fish: creole wrass, horse-eye jacks, yellow tail snappers and black groupers.
I´ll miss swimming with the fishies, but I think it´s better for us land animals to live mostly on land...
-Sarah