Monkeys? La La!

Tropical Flower

There’s more to do in Roatan than just diving. On one of the days we didn’t spend underwater, we explored the area including Gumbalimba Park. The park has spectacular flowers, a nice area to sit with a cold drink, a cave with historical relics, and tropical animals. You can get to the park by walking in, hiring a taxi, or you can zip in. We chose the latter.

Once we got to South Shore Zip-Line Adventures, we found we were all too old for the ride. However, with a bit of discussion we convinced the owner that we were all in good shape and wouldn’t do anything

Clockwise from upper left: David, Andi, Steve, Cynthia

stupid (or at least act Near-Normal). He did admit that they had strapped a 90 year old woman in with one of the guys and taken her down the zip line; she’d had the ride of her life! We had a great time, too. The trick is not to slow down too soon or you have to use one of the overhead ropes to drag yourself along. Besides, slowing down isn’t nearly as much fun a barreling along screaming ‘Whee’ at the top of your lungs. Some of the staff were adept at hanging upside down from their zip-lines, but since none of us were quite that good we stayed upright. A couple more practice runs and I’d be willing to give upside down zipping a try! There are 16 levels, so it’s quite a trip from the top of the canopy to the final stop at Gumbalimba Park.

Down deep in Roatan

There’s only one sport that I’m any good at and that’s scuba diving. In early 1989 I discovered

Andi in full gear

snorkeling finding that it was bloody hard work and didn’t get me down to what I wanted to see. As luck would have it, later that year graduate student who was also scuba instructor enrolled in one of my classes. Scuba diving, he said, was a lot easier than snorkeling because you had your air with you and you weren’t fighting the surface waves. That sounded reasonable to me so I embarked on scuba lessons. While my graduate student was an excellent teacher, I was a horrible student. The only good things about learning were that he was exceptionally patient and he didn’t let me drown; I think the latter was because he needed the class I was teaching to finish his master’s degree. In any case, all of my angst, fear, and ineptitude vanished the minute I hit the ocean in Cozumel, Mexico. In 1990, it was a glorious place and I developed an abiding love of scuba diving. This love has fueled my travel bug, taking me around the world to play in the oceans; the latest Near-Normal diving adventure was at Bananarama in Roatan, Honduras.