Eons ago during the last Ice Age, an ancient waterfall cut a massive gorge through the very foundations of the island of Roatan. Millennia later, the ten-storey canyon at Spooky Channel rests just under the ocean surface, inviting Advanced Open Water Divers to shine their torches into this monolithic marvel.

You begin the dive in murky green shallows of the Sandy Bay lagoon. The eerie visibility for which this site earns its “spooky” status will gradually engulf you as you follow the rocky bottom deeper into the grotto. You’ll feel almost overwhelmed as the channel walls slowly rise and close in from both sides. At 12m/40ft, you’ll plunge through a large dark hole leading straight down.*

The sun is quickly reduced to a few cascading godrays as the channel ceiling closes together stories above. At the surface, a tiny crack in the reef crest balloons outward to form the main chamber, a 29m/95ft deep cathedral of green sea stars, scurrying lobsters, and grotesque rock formations. While this part of the channel is not terribly dense with fish life, sliver-shaped schools of houndfish— smaller relatives of the barrucuda— often congregate in the shadows.

As you drift out of the cathedral towards the mouth of the channel, the visibility quickly clears to the Roatan’s typical pristine conditions. Parrotfish, groupers, and angelfish pluck algae from the rubble. During the summer months the algae growth in this section thrives on the warmer stagnant water trapped in the channel, transforming the floor into a verdant carpet.

After about 20 minutes, you will reach the mouth of the channel. Most divers pass through the large vertical mouth and onto the coral reef. If you feel confident in small spaces, you can find a smaller swimthru to the right to dramatically exits through tiny blue hole onto the wall. Watch your buoyancy when exiting the channel: the wall at Spooky Channel is deep— over 60m/200ft.

The coral reef wall is populated by large schools of bright blue creole wrasse and very large yellowfin groupers. The groupers have are particularly well-adjusted to diver presence, swimming within a few feet of the group. If you are carrying a spear, you can expect to have several of these fish as hunting partners, eagerly awaiting your next lionfish slay.

Alternatively, you can finish the dive with a series of swimthrus near the back of the channel. About halfway back in the channel on the right, you will find a pair of columns at 14m/50ft. Follow the vertical slope up to 10m/30ft to find a series of easy swimthrus, the last of which shoots you out under the mooring line at a perfect safety stop depth of 5m/15ft.

Aquatic Life: black groupers, yellowfin groupers, barracudas, lobsters, king crabs, houndfish, oceanic triggerfish, various sea stars, toadfish

Don’t Miss… looking under the rocks for a toadfish. Though you will probably spend much of your dive swimming on your back and staring up at the channel, it pays to look down for these odd-shaped and very vocal bottom-dwellers.

When you think of the idyllic Caribbean beach bar, you’re thinking of Sundowners.

There’s nothing quite like Sundowners. THE watering hole for West End, this is where town’s eclectic mix of tourists, dive instructors, locals, expats, and street dogs come together to toast the sunset with a cold beer or a glass of rum and pineapple.’

It’s called Sundowners for a reason: located directly on the white sands of Half Moon Bay, this site is privy to exquisite sunsets for most of the year. The popularity of sunset-watching is only eclipsed by the weekly game of “Chase the Ace,” where every Wednesday each drink buys you a chance to win a growing pot of money. When the pot gets full and the odds are good of winning, nearly the entire town will turn out for their chance to draw the Ace of Spades (the winning card). Hilariously, the crowd will cheer when you lose– it means another chance for them to Chase the Ace next week!

If you’re only in town for a few hours or just simply want a place to chill for the afternoon, Sundowners has immediate shore access to the shallows of Half Moon Bay. Wade in with a beer and beat the heat– just don’t be surprised if one of the bar’s friendly Rottweilers decides to join you! If getting salty isn’t your thing, Sundowners also offers beach chairs for sunbathing and a shaded lounge deck.

So the location is unbeatable and your relaxation options are great, but what about the bar itself? Drink-wise, Sundowners offers all the Honduran beers (all four of them, all equally terrible– Salva Vida is the most drinkable in my opinion), basic well drinks, and a few blended concoctions. If you’re new to Roatan, you have to try the Monkey La La, a delicious yet deceptively potent frozen drink (careful! it will sneak up on you!). Personally, I prefer sipping on rum and pineapple juice with a lime wedge; with enough rum and vitamin C to fight off scurvy, it’s the pirate’s choice!

Sundowners’ food is mostly good but a bit uninspired. The hamburger, nacho cheese chicken sandwich, and any of the chicken wraps earn high marks from me. Food delivery is usually reasonable (especially for “island time”), though it can become a bit of a wait if the bar is busy. Rarely do I crave Sundowners’ food; it’s more often that I find myself several rums deep and realize that I have yet to eat dinner!

The staff is friendly and, more importantly, long-term. Unlike most of the bars in West End, Sundowners staff has been around for a while. Not only does this make the bar run more effectively, it means that tourists can learn insider tips by simply sitting down and chatting. A personal shout-out goes to Paul, the (sometimes) afro-sporting cousin of the owner who is a killer bartender and really cool guy. Also: TIP YOUR BARTENDER! Trust me, it goes a long way to getting even better service.

Prices are reasonable across the board. While the drink prices are a fraction higher than other bars in West End, they’re still less than the overpriced West Bay bars and in a range that most tourists will find acceptable. Locals and expats typically find the marginally higher prices a bit of a turn-off (and are vocal about it), but that doesn’t keep them from gathering together for the daily sunset. Backpackers, sorry, but you’re in for a shock: Roatan is not mainland Honduras, and the prices are significantly higher… but then again, Sundowner’s isn’t some trashy mainland hole or sulfur-reeking shanty on Utila.

One other thing to note: Sundowners is the “early” bar on Roatan. It’s usually closed between 9 and 10 pm. If you’re looking to carry on with your evening elsewhere, just follow the crowd on the nightly West End “drift dive” to the next hot spot.

It’s time to break out your underwater cameras: the Roatan Marine Park is holding its Third Annual Marine Photography Contest!

Winning images will be printed in the 2011 Roatan Marine Park Calendar in order to showcase the natural beauty of Roatan’s coral reefs and highlight threats to their future survival.

Entries accepted for six categories:

• macro
• reef inhabitants
• black and white
• divers
• reefs at risk
• invertebrates

Deadline for submission:
31 July 2010

Details:

• All images must be from Roatan
• Images should be in .jpg format. Please include your full name, entry category, where image was taken, and a title
• Photos may be under or above water, but must maintain a marine context
• 1st and 2nd place in each category will be featured in the calendar with small images for runners-up
• Submission of images constitutes your permission for the Roatan Marine Park (RMP) to use these images free of charge for the 2011 RMP Calendar and other RMP publications. All images will be credited to their owners when used.

For more details of the competition, visit www.roatanmarinepark.com.

Email images to: info@roatanmarinepark.net

Warning: this may be you.

For example, this is the size of the spill compared to my current residence on the island of Oahu in Hawaii:

Try to imagine that entire area covered in an oily sludge….

...like this poor guy here.

I’ve included more screenshots comparing the oil spill to other places around the world.

Be sure to visit http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com to track the spread of the spill.

Mooresville, my old home in North Carolina

My home in the Caribbean: Roatan, Honduras

New York's never been slimier. The same can't be said for New Jersey.

The slipperiest thing to hit the Windy City since Ron Blagovich

That's 13 million people covered in oil.

The fish and chips are extra oily today.

Problems with oil in the Middle East? No way...

And you thought the last World Cup had a slimey ending...

Surf's up

Lia and I go back a few years when I was a scuba diving instructor at Coconut Tree Divers on the island of Roatan, Honduras. When I first met her, she was helping film the hilariously disastrous Roatan Movie— the making which was infinitely funnier than the final result. We later collaborated on photo shoots for a few web projects around the island.

Lia probably holds the world record for most time spent inside a homemade submarine (not including Karl Stanley and Barry, of course). For theses images, she was crouched for hours in a tiny spherical dome. She had to keep her lens close to the mere five inches of convex glass separating her thousands of pounds of crushing pressure— but not too close or the cold condensation dripping from the ceiling would fry her camera. She had to wait— and wait— and wait until the right deep sea creature swam by, then try to snap off quality shots with both the submarine and the creature in motion. The results are nothing short of incredible.

Lia has since explored the seas and land of Asia and the South Pacific. She is currently in Australia.

The goal of TiR is to promote tourism and support local businesses on the Caribbean island of Roatan in the Bay Islands of Honduras through online marketing. TiR aims to be Roatan’s premier information service for travel, living, and island news. The site combines a clean modern design, advanced web technologies, and the power of Google Maps to present the beauty of Roatan to the outside world as never before seen.

The Story of TiR

Steve was sick of computer programming.

After wrapping up his Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Steve sold most of his belongings, packed his bags, and moved to the small Caribbean island of Roatan to teach scuba diving, drink rum, and live the beach bum lifestyle. He fell in love with the island’s jaw-dropping coral reef, friendly locals, sweeping white sand beaches, and laid-back attitude. His original plan to stay for three months was postponed… and postponed again… and again… until a year and a half of living the good life had passed by.

Steve returned to the so-called ‘real world’ to program professionally for a video game company in North Carolina. The job was good, the pay was fine, but something was missing. Staring at the photo of scuba divers on Roatan’s reef adorning the background of his computer, he knew he had to go back.

Meanwhile, a few websites Steve had made for Roatan businesses were starting to generate real results. A crazy little idea crept into his head: he could make a genuine impact on local businesses by driving tourism to the island through online marketing. Once again, he sold his stuff, packed his bags, and returned to the island he loved.

Real Time Development On Island Time

Upon returning, Steve began researching how he could make the biggest impact on the local market. Being relatively undeveloped, the island presented some unique challenges. As roads did not have names, local businesses did not have mailing addresses. There was hardly any news media on the island. Internet access was limited and quite slow by first-world standards.

Steve wanted a website that would do more than just act as a business directory. He saw a website that would show visitors exactly where everything was located on Roatan. He believed that media transparency was essential to promoting good business practices in the developing world. He envisioned a site architecture that would offset the slow internet speeds by incrementally streaming data in such a way that the website would never have to be reloaded. He dreamed of a website that would be sleek, modern, and beautiful—a place where local businesses would be proud to appear.

Steve was as naïve as he was ambitious. He thought the website would take six months to build. Unreliable electricity, crashed computers, political turmoil and personal hardships perpetually delayed the project. Progress was steady but aggravatingly slow. He poured his heart, soul, and personal finances into the project, bankrupting himself in the process.

The Dream Becomes Reality

Two years later, Steve finally published the first live version of TiR.

TiR remains the project of which Steve is the most proud. The website is proof that hard work, determination, and a fair bit of insanity can unite to create something incredible. Steve continues to refine TiR to fit the ever-changing needs of local businesses with emerging web technologies, allowing business owners to reach their online customers.

Steve hopes you enjoy the unique experience of TiR almost as much as you enjoy your stay on Roatan. If you find this website useful, please consider making a donation through PayPal; every buck goes a long way towards keeping the dream alive.

On June 28, the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya and sent him out of the country. Though Zelaya’s removal was authorized by the Honduran Supreme Court, approved by the Honduran Congress, and explicitly mandated in the Honduran Constitution, the Department of State staunchly refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the interim government. The Obama Administration urges Americans to show their solidarity with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and our other socialist comrades by deferring all travel plans to Honduras.

There have reportedly been frequent peace marches at various locations around Honduras, including Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, and Coxen Hole. However, since none of these peace marches have been shown on CNN, the Department of State advises Americans that these purported marches are most likely propaganda fabricated by Roberto Michelleti’s coup government. Americans are reminded that all peaceful demonstrations will turn violent with little or no warning. The Department of State recommends that Americans continue to watch our sponsor network CNN for unbiased and accurate reports about the Honduran crisis.

The Obama Administration has also expressed concern about an alarming number of Americans vanishing in the Bay Islands of Honduras, particularly Roatan. Over the last decade numerous American citizens have traveled to Roatan and never returned home to the USSA. Since the coup, the Department of State has received reports from Roatan of tanks rolling down the street, locals getting loaded, and a submarine patrolling the bay. Americans are strongly urged to avoid all travel to Roatan.

The Department of State reminds all citizens that their patriotic duty to Buy American extends beyond America’s borders. Spending American dollars in a rogue state such as Honduras undermines the American Collective, impedes our economic recovery, and constitutes an act of treason punishable by gulag. The Department of State also advises citizen to remain within America’s border in order to ensure compliance with President Obama’s tax code.

The Department of State especially urges the following citizens to avoid all travel to Roatan, the Bay Islands, and Honduras:

• Citizens who hate beautiful beaches and Caribbean seas
• Citizens without a sense of humor
• Citizens afraid of water or fish
• Citizens who worship Our Messiah Barack Obama
• Citizens who prefer rush hour traffic to boat rides
• Citizens incapable of rest and/or relaxation
• Citizens who trust everything on CNN
• Citizens frightened by Hispanics, the Spanish language, and/or baleadas
• Citizens who believe that all of life is misery and suffering
• Citizens who don’t get satire
• Canadians

In these difficult times, the Department of State urges all Americans to remain patriotic: stay in your cubicle, max out your credit card, and chase the American Dream. Why would you want to go to Roatan anyway? They don’t even have a McDonalds.

I arrived on Roatan’s sister island via Captain Verne’s catamaran ($100 round trip Half Moon Bay, Roatan to Utila Town, Utila) on Tuesday. The plan? Hang out for a two nights, do a little skin diving, and return to the “real world” of Roatan on Thursday.

Yeah, so about that plan…

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m once again telling the lie, “Seriously guys, I’m leaving tomorrow.” This time, though, I mean it. Honestly.

When I get back to Roatan’s blazing fast internet (think year-2000 speeds, as opposed to Utila’s 1994 speeds), expect deliciously debaucherous updates about my time here. I didn’t think an island could be more ridiculously bizarre than Roatan, but this flat, fun, fecal-smelling atoll has proven me wrong.

I’m leaving tomorrow. Seriously.

Slash throat.

She grabs her buddy’s alternate air source and tugs. It doesn’t budge. She jerks down again. Nothing. It’s snagged on her buddy’s strap.

Her eyes widen with panic.

My left hand twists her valve open. I can feel the air pulsing down the tubes to her convulsing lungs. “Okay?” I signal. She breaths deeply, rapidly. I lock my arms on hers and look in her wide eyes. “Breathe… breathe…” The bubbles slow. She’s shaking, but I’m not letting her go anywhere. Not until she’s ready.

“Okay,” she signals.

“Okay. Do it again,” I sign.

Our second attempt at the Air Depletion and Alternate Air Source skill from the PADI Open Water Diver course goes without a hitch. As we surface, she’s obviously a bit agitated. “I didn’t like that out of air thing.”

“It’s not fun, is it?”

“No.”

“Good thing is, you should never have to use it. If you get in the habit of checking your air every few minutes and tell your buddy when you get to half-tank and low-on-air, there’s no reason you should ever run out of air. But it’s good to practice this skill so that in the unlikely event that is did happen you would be prepared. It’s like having Triple-A when you’re driving on a long road trip.”

Then I splash seawater at her with my hand.

“Hey, why are you doing that?”

“Your mask is on your forehead.”

“So?”

“It’s a sign of panic. Remember? That’s a beer fine.”

She sighs sarcastically.

“That’s two for me at Beer O’Clock? C’mon, let’s go down and practice that skill one more time, and then we’ll go try and find the octopus living under the log.”

I watched reruns of the Jetsons as a kid and was entirely convinced that the 21st century was going to be nothing less than kickasstastic. Flying cars. Jetpacks. Soulless robot slaves. Hell yeah, Class of 2000, we’re the Leaders of the 21st century!

So where’s my jetpack now?

My grandpa used to cut out newspaper clips of the lunar landings and space shuttle launches and laminate them. He gave them to me as gifts. I first spied the rings of Saturn through some dude’s telescope at a camp ground in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. I went to community college lectures on black holes and the formation of the solar system with my undoubtedly bored father. My childhood dream was to be an astronaut. NASA promised us a man on Mars by 2010. I flapped around the elementary school playground pretending to be that man.

I watch as a telecommunications satellite—merely a white dot against the moonless sky—flies in a straight path across Scorpio and the pearly smear of the Milky Way. Ripe seagrapes rustle in the branches of the nearby trees as a gentle Caribbean breeze sweeps off the dark water of Half Moon Bay. I am reclining on a dock 5m/15ft above sea level, staring at the unfathomable vastness that lies beyond the atmosphere of our water-covered sphere, and genuinely loving my life.

I will never set foot on the red planet. I doubt I will ever be wealthy enough to afford a flight in space. I find airplanes a bit unnerving. My childhood fantasy of being an astronaut is dead.

But every day, I strap into my personal subaquatic “jetpack” and cruise weightless through the unfathomable vastness of inner space. I have ventured—three times!—to 1500ft under the sea and come face-to-face with alien life. I have been fortunate enough to spend a majority of the last five years of my life exploring the caves, canyons, walls and shallows of Roatan’s amazing coral reef.

It’s my adulthood reality, and I love it every day.

A drop of water appears on my laptop screen. Then another.

I barely have time to shut my Mac before the heavens open up. West End High Street dissolves in to a muddy smear. Half Moon Bay shimmers like a pot of gold as the amber light of the setting sun glimmers and sparkles upon the rippling surface. Children wrestle in the golden waters of the shallows, their laughter piercing the air as lightning crackles across the sky.

We retreat into the dive shop. The rainstorm whites out the bay. Oh well, crack the beers. There’s nowhere to go and nowhere we’d rather be.

Goldfinger is running the V-Planner to plan a Trimix dive on the Josie J shipwreck. 245ft for 15 minutes—long enough to secure the plaque he welded in honor of Marc Wesler (1971-2009) to the shipwreck. He prints off a sheet of paper and laminates it. “Dive plan and contingency plans,” he explains as he mounts them to his slate. “This dive shouldn’t be too hard to pull off, but,, you know, no taking chances.”

(Marc Wesler, 30 March 1971 - 13 June 2009)

“No kidding. Unlike other shops.”

“What? Are they diving the J again?”

“Yeah man. I was diving the other day off Black Rock and as we leveled off at 110ft over the Josie J, I saw something white below me. Two freakin’ divers swimming around the wreck. Single tanks. No surface support. “

“Idiots.”

“Yeah, I was pissed off. They were doing it right in front of my customers too, ya know? What the hell am I supposed to tell them when we get back on the boat?”

“That they’re idiots.”

“Well that was pretty much what I did. I just hate seeing this crap going on again. These kids are going to get themselves killed and it’ll make the whole island look bad.”

“Yeah I know. I want to post a sign on the wreck that says ‘If you can read this and only have one tank then FUCK OFF!’”

“But then I saw a manta ray.”

“No way.”

“Look, pictures.” I open my laptop. “About seven feet wide, gliding right at me as we ascended up from the wreck. Insane. I lost 20 bar as I screamed and pointed. The whole group saw it.”

“I hope it comes around when I’m putting this sign down there.”

“I know dude. There’s been crazy stuff around here this week! Sharks, eagle rays, tons of turtles. I saw an octopus sitting right out in the open today. And I found that encrusted computer keyboard at 130ft on El Aquario. It’s great—except we’re just missing the customers.”

“No shit. This paycheck is gonna suck, eh?”

“Say goodbye to the high season.”

We tacitly acknowledge our collective disappointment. My eyes drift to a weathered political cartoon on the wall. In faded black and white, four commie macaws screech in unison: “Restore the Dictator in Honduras!” The computer monitor portrays the burning façade of the El Heraldo building in Tegucigalpa. Poorly translated English reveals that supporters of ousted Honduran President Mel Zelaya have hurled Molotov cocktails into the newspaper company’s headquarters. Just another day in post-coup Honduras.

“Got any back-up plans?” I ask.

“Just these.” Goldfinger slaps the dive slate around his wrist and flips through the contingency plans. He drags deep on his cigarette. “Guess I can go weld for a while in Canada. I just don’t want to leave. You?”

“No idea. I wasn’t planning on leaving. Not yet. Not this way.”

My adulthood reality is coming to an end.

The one-two punch of the global economic recession and Honduran constitutional crisis has KOed the tourism industry on Roatan. In light of the world economic downturn over the last year, West End businesses were faring well. The dive industry was down about 20-25% on 2008’s numbers, but there was still an ample supply of incoming customers. Recession or not, it was shaping up to be another mind-blowing summer of diving and fun.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, the Honduran government couldn’t figure whether to impeach or overthrow their elected President. On 28 June 2009, they decided to do a spectacularly sloppy job of both. Early that morning, the Honduran military arrested President Mel Zelaya in his underwear on the doorstep of his Presidential estate, stuffed him in a plane, and sent him into exile in Costa Rica. The Congress authorized his purported resignation papers and instated his successor, Roberto Micheletti.

Sounds like a coup d’etat right? Well, sorta.

The military acted under the orders of the Supreme Court and with the support of the Congress (in which Zelaya’s own Red Party held majority). Roberto Micheletti, the Speaker of Parliament, Red Party member, and next in line in presidential succession, took over the interim government. The military immediately transferred power to the Congress—still controlled by Zelaya’s Red Party—and life continued peacefully for a few days.

Word of the supposed coup d’etat spread across the AP wires. While the interim government worked to maintain peace in the wake of the transition, the American news networks erroneously labeled footage of pro-Micheletti peace marches as pro-Zelaya protests, recycled old news clips of Hurricane Mitch battering the Honduran coastline, fabricated statistics of popular support for the ousted President, and did their absolute finest to scare the piss out of any American (who, until he turned on CNN, didn’t know Honduras from Atlantis) away from ever setting foot in my tropical paradise. Needless to say, diving vacation reservations disappeared overnight.

It’s a “coup” that could only happen in Honduras.

In the wake of widespread international condemnation—including suspension from the OAS (Organization of American States), termination of funds from the World Bank, and calls by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban Presdient Fidel Castro to reinstate (by force if necessary) Zelaya immediately—the interim government remained steadfast in denying Zelaya reentry to Honduras. The Supreme Court outlined its case against Zelaya: that his proposed referendum for extending presidential terms beyond four years was a violation of the Honduran constitution; that he defied a unanimous vote by Congress forbidding the vote by leading his followers to forcefully retake the voting ballots from a Honduran air force base; and that he was constitutionally obligated to step down immediately. The interim government was resolute: If Mel Zelaya attempted to enter the country, he would face immediate arrest. The Archbishop Cardinal of Honduras pleaded with Zelaya not to return, warning that his presence could cause a bloodbath.

Well, no cowboy worth his ten-gallon hat can turn down a dare like that, y’reckon?

Mel’s first game of chicken took place in the skies above Tegucigalpa on 5 June 2009. As a metallic bird bearing the mustached ex-President circled the airport, trucks and soldiers filled the landstrip to block his return. Pro-Zelaya protestors clashed with the military and the first bloodshed of the coup was drawn as a bullet pierced 19-year-old Isy Obed Murillo Mencía’s skull. I got drunk as hell on rum as I suddenly found myself an unexpected prisoner in a beautiful beachside condo when the cops screamed down the West End High Street declaring an immediate curfew.

I woke up the next day to cotton-candy clouds illuminated in the morning light overhead, the subtle jackhammer of a hangover in my head, and the country I have called home for nearly five years in turmoil. My stomach was tangled in knots from a night of anxious sleep tempered only by mass quantities of alcohol. I staggered out into a world of uncertainty.

The following day, as Costa Rican President Oscar Arias volunteered to mediate the crisis between Zelaya and the current Honduran administration, I volunteered to return to bed and sleep away the previous night. I awoke shivering in a bed soaked with my own sweat. What the hell? I changed the bedsheets and returned to sleep. Forty-five minutes later and it’s the same scenario. Okay, this ain’t right. I retreat to the comfort of my hammock. Thirty-minutes pass and I’m doubled over in cold chills. The beeping thermometer in my mouth confirms my fears: 102F. This ain’t right at all.

It lasts a week. The doctor’s say it’s a bacterial infection. Feels like the last time I had dengue to me. Every exhausting day is followed by an even more hellish night. I awaken from fever-induced nightmares to find my mattress thorough saturated—both sides—with my sweat as I lay trembling in the fetal position.

Dawn breaks to the sound of roosters and diesel generators. My electrical fan sits motionless as the room temperature rapidly rises. RECO (Roatan Electrical Company) is an angry god who must be appeased by throwing virgins into the volcano every so often or he will banish us to the darkness. Unfortunately we have neither volcanos nor virgins on Roatan, so RECO spills his wrath out at the most ungodly of hours. Too tired to read and too weak to think. I swelter in my hammock, lost in fuzzy memories of the past, accompanied by the island soundtrack of children playing baseball in the street.

In high school I worked as a lifeguard for four insanely boring summers. When the teeny-bopper brats I was supervising broke pool rules, we would put them in “time-out” and make them watch their peers splash in the water as they sat on the pool edge. (This was opposed to my preferred method of punishment: waterboarding. It’s not officially torture, and it’s equally effective on spoiled children as it is on terrorists.) Inevitably, one of the little bastards in timeout would sneak a leg, foot, or even a toe in the forbidden water, stare me directly in the eyes, and tacitly dare me to blow my whistle. It was a silly game of chicken.

Zelaya played his second second silly game of chicken on 24 July 2009 when he decided to stick his big toe across the Honduran border for thirty minutes. Like a whiney eleven-year-old stuck in time-out, Zelaya glared at soldiers of his own supposed army from the demilitarized zone between Honduras and Nicaragua and dared them to resist his triumphant return. He then returned to the safety of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s arms, sucking on his thumb with one hand whilst flipping the bird with his other towards his ousters.

The weeks wane on. When I finally find the strength, I venture into West End to buy some fruit from the produce trucks. The effects of the coup are apparent: the Dionysian fever-pitch lifestyle that typifies our summers in Roatan is replaced with the somber flu of uncertainty; the beaches are vacant; the dive boats are empty; the restaurants, deserted. As Mel Zelaya courts the OAS and Hilary Clinton with his version of the coup, a barrage of international travel advisories slapped against Honduras slowly asphyxiates the Bay Islands.

The downward spiral is accelerating. Mel Zelaya is urging his supporters to boycott and disrupt the upcoming presidential election in November, insisting that, due to the coup, he will remain the Honduran president even after his elected term has expired in January. Civil unrest mounts on the mainland: there have been sporadic outbursts of violence, a handful of strikes, and a few more deaths.

The true tragedy of the coup lies in the starving stomachs of the country’s largely impoverished population. Internationally isolated from much-needed foreign aid and investment, the people of Honduras face a long hard road to economic and political recovery—and this road will be strewn with the corpses of several thousand Hondurans, whether from violence or starvation, before the final destination is reached. The constitutional crisis will undeniably define the future of Honduras as a sovereign nation/ Unfortunately, the Honduras government(s) has done an amazing job of screwing it up thus far.

Meanwhile, the Caribbean paradise of Roatan continues life as usual: peaceful, beautiful, relaxed, quiet– but despondently deserted. West End is a ghost town (though arguably the most beautiful ghost town on the planet). The bars are half-full with the same familiar faces every night—familiar, but more weathered, and there are fewer as time passes. The rainy season looms and a mass exodus of expatriates is underway. “I’m leaving tomorrow” is suddenly not a lie of Roatan.

It’s the best laid plans of mice and men. Mel Zelaya just shot Lenny in the back of the head.

“You gotta want it! What do you want?”

“Jack! Jack! Jack! Jack!” I shout.

Dr. Jekyll stares me down from across the table. “Forget about it. Not gonna happen.”

“Jack! Jack!”

“Here we go.”

“Jack!”

Goldfinger turns the river card. Five of hearts. My heart falls.

“Two pairs queens-nines beats your jack-nines. Show me the money!” Dr. Jekyll cackles.

I reluctantly push the rest of my chips across the table. “Son of a…”

“Hey, good game,” Dr. Jekyll says as he shakes my hand. “For a loser. Now get me a beer.”

I only get two strides towards the beer cooler before my Open Water student intercepts me bearing two cold Salva Vidas in her hands. “I think I owe you these.”

“Ha! Thanks, I had forgotten, but I’ll take ‘em.” I hand one beer over to Dr. Jekyll and take a hearty swig on mine. “How’d you like the diving today?”

“I loved it! That turtle was so friendly! And what was that weird flat fish? White, kinda the size of a pancake…”

“Peacock flounder. Really cool fish. Masters of camouflage. They can change their colors and patterns to match almost anything.”

“No way.”

“Seriously. I saw them in Greece on these black and red sand beaches, and their colors perfectly matched whatever surface they were on. Wild stuff.”

“So what are we doing tomorrow?” she asks, finishing her beer.

“Another video, a few more skills in the bay, and then our second Open Water dive. We get to practice the alternate air source ascent one more time.”

She rolls her eyes. “Do we have to do it?”

“Yes, it’s an important skill.”

“I hate that one. I don’t like depending on other people.”

“Down there other people are the only thing you have in an emergency. Most of the time you don’t have to depend on them—it’s just all about the fish. But should something go wrong… well… then your buddy is your lifeline.”

“But what if the hose gets caught like it did today?”

I pause to take a swig of my beer and think. I had never encountered that problem before in my previous 200 Open Water classes, and quite frankly I am still bothered that it occurred. Good thing I had my hand on her tank valve the entire time—a safety practice passed down from my IDC five years ago but never needed until six hours ago—or else it would have been much worse. Then I notice her scanning my eyes as if reading my entire inner monologue, remind myself that women have telepathy, and spin an answer as best I can. “Then you do a CESA.”

“What’s that?”

“The Controllled Emergency Swimming Ascent. Remember doing it today?”

“Which one was that?”

“Where you swam a long way going, ‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…’”

“Oh yeah.”

“It’s like a back-up plan for your back-up plan. We’ll practice a real one tomorrow at the start of our dive.”

“Cool. So, what are you up to tonight?”

“Not drinking.”

“Next you’ll say I love you.”

“At this rate, probably,” I reply, finishing my beer.

“Look!” She points towards the bay.

The beach is bathed in a Martian glow. We walk onto the dock to watch the last crimson sliver of sun vanish behind the rugged outline of retreating thunderheads. To the south, bolt lighting streaks down across massive thunderheads accumulated over the Honduran mainland. Land crabs, their alien eyes independently pivoting in all directions, scurry horizontally across the rain-pocked beach. Like Neil Armstrong taking his famous small step, I leave a line of footprints on the sand as I stroll to the water’s edge. Under a pink sky, Half Moon Bay looks like an oily smear of otherworldly liquid. Is this the shore of Titan’s liquid methane seas?

Or is this just my adulthood reality fading away with the sun?

Feces, meet fan.

West End police have imposed a curfew and barracaded the intersection in order to promote the public peace during this night of political upheaval. Though grossly inconvenient for West End business, the move is justifiable given the recent turn of events on the Honduran mainland. Police patrols are currently strolling the streets, blaring messages to “stay in your homes” over their crackly loudspeakers.

Ousted Honduran President Mel Zelaya’s attempts to land in Tegucigalpa today sparked civil unrest in the nation’s capital, as thousands of pro-Zelaya supported rushed the airport. Zelaya is currently in asylum in El Salvador. Two people have reportedly been killed in Tegucigalpa, drawing the first blood in this otherwise peaceful coup (or Constitutional balance of powers, as Zelaya opponents assert).

Meanwhile, thousands of Roatan residents marched in French Harbor and Coxen Hole in support of the interim administration, waiving blue and white signs painted with “Peace and Democracy.”

With a double rainbow brilliantly arching over thunderheads to the southeast, the sun melts into the glowing ripples of Half Moon Bay, spilling the surface with the oily shimmer of diffracted light. We huddle together on the balcony as the stars come out, the rum saturated laughter of a house party flooding the air, haunted by the lingering unspoken question. We do not know how this night will transpire, but we know the night is here and now and beautiful.

How many more do we have?