Rusty - 20,000 Leagues under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Sunday morning at Mango Creek and a delicious breakfast had just been inhaled by the Huntingdon group. We were told that there would be an opportunity for us to scuba dive at some point while we were on Roatan if we wanted. As soon as I heard this, I was ready to go, and already felt this would be the highlight of my trip. Our instructor told us we would be going in groups of four and only one trip would be made each day. As I flashed back to our near emergency landing at the waterside airport, and the, what seemed to be monsoon, that I had awoken to in the middle of the night, I thought I would wait a few days to see if the sun would come out and the water would clear. Luckily for me, I woke up Tuesday morning, not to gale force winds, but instead to a bright, clear sunshine and the sounds of birds chirping. By the time Thursday rolled around, we hadn’t gotten any rain since it stopped Monday night, and I thought that would be the best time to go. Abby, Professor Hilgartner, Sharissa, and I were the volunteers for Thursday’s expedition and I couldn’t wait to suit up and get under water.Everyone in the group was excited to start but not everyone had the same luck once we got underway. The only problem I encountered was that I was a little bit too eager to take pictures of the lodge, in the rain mind you, in the first few days and I had used up all of the film in my underwater camera. We stayed under water for about 25 minutes though and got to depths of around 30 feet. That may not seem like much to most people, but for those of us who had never been scuba diving before, we may as well have been 30 miles under. The abundance and variety of fish is what surprised me the most. Blue fish, green fish, orange fish, spiky fish, big fish,small fish. Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, EVERYWHERE! The only other time I had seen that many fish was in Mexico, and that was only because our guide brought tortillas to throw around us to attract the fish. This was definitely one of my favorite activities.