(the good)
actually, 2. and they were every bit of awesome that i imagined. the tan one was just hanging out in a crevice in the reef, the brown one was hanging onto a bit of coral with his tail. by now i think i've seen a bunch of cool stuff but this was the best. better than the sharks. and the rays and the rock fish and the peacock flounders and everything. the diving wasn't that spectacular, although i'm glad i went (even if i didn't see a seahorse), but this made it worth the expensiveness.
i also saw a field of starfish. and lots of interesting rock formations. and a wreck. there weren't alot of fish, and the coral wasn't comparable to elsewhere in the caribbean. but i'm determined to scuba dive in every country i visit, so far i'm on track.
i was given a spear on the first dive and i killed 4 lion fish. i love that i can show up to a dive shop, talk to them for 5 minutes and be given a spear. i do have a bit of trouble killing on my first shot, i always seem to hit them in the gut, then they want to hobble away and i have to shoot again. in belize and honduras there were giant groupers that would smell the meat and wait for you to release the fish, dead or not, and they would suck them down in one gulp. there's nothing to eat them here, in fact they were the biggest fish i saw. so if it was still flopping after i shot it i had to scrape it off my spear with a rock or my fin and stab it again. i was a bit careless on my last kill and while i was scraping it off i stabbed myself with one of its venomous spikes (the bad). ouch.
i've heard many stories about lion fish stings and none were super pleasant. they range from really bad bee sting to hospital time. i felt the spike enter my thumb and i thought, oh great, maybe i'll have cardiac arrest at 50 feet, that'll be cool. instant throbbing pain. i swam up to my dive master and tried to tell him that i stabbed myself with a poisonous fish, but i wasn't dying yet, so no worries.
by the time i finished the dive my thumb was almost twice the size of normal, bright red and massively painful. but since i hadn't yet found my seahorse i didn't wanna go back so we went to our next dive site.
by the end of the second dive it was almost back to normal and it barely hurts now so i think all is ok. just to be sure i'll drink plenty of rum tonite to bully the other toxins out of my liver.
which brings me to 'the ugly'. men shouldn't dive in speedos. enough said.
and since i've brought up things that annoy me, don't use your ipad as a camera when you're at a busy tourist site. 10 people with ipads can block 100 people from seeing anything. i have countless photos from the panama canal that are ruined because someone (chicks, mostly) is holding up an ipad, and couldn't be bothered to fold their cover under. rude.
now its about nap time for me. i found some fantastic mexican food (and good margaritas too) and my a/c finally works, perfect combination for an afternoon nap. my hostel is great but they only have 3 controllers for the a/c units. when you leave there's a switch in the lobby that cuts power to your room, they switch it back on when you return. but the a/c doesn't automatically come back on, you have to get a controller, walk to your room, turn it on, then return the controller. people don't realize this so they lock the controllers in their room somewhere which means that other hot people don't get a/c until a controller is located. not the best system.
even with the bad and the ugly today has been great. and its thai tuesday for dinner, then off to check out the bar scene. so far i like roatan alot better but i'll do my best to enjoy bocas del toro. its almost like my job.
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