The inbetween blog. No.1

How Uwe and Dorte ended up on Roatan.

The idea of moving or at least revisit Central America got planted in our heads in the end of the 1980'ties.
Had visited friends in Guatemala and El Salvador and just fell in love.
Almost 10 years passed before we came back. First we had to live out the dream of having a house on the country side in Denmark with garden, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and a pig.

Every sunday we would study the newspaper travel section and dream of places far far away.
Then one sunday, a danish journalist had this brilliant article about the Bay Islands and in particular Roatan, it just sounded to be the place you have to visit. We were still not divers at that time. But the article we kept and made it a goal that one time we would go there.
In the meanwhile Uwe got certified as a CMAS diver at the local diveclub in Loekken, Denmark. Do I have to mention cold water diving? I Dorte) was not as hardcore and chose to get Padi certified on Crete im Greece. Anyhow I managed to join Uwe and his drysuit buddies for around 10 cold water dives on the west coast of Denmark. Then finally we had saved up for a month vacation to ROATAN in Octuber 1998.
It took a bit longer to save up, because everytime we were close, the car broke down and had to be fixed.... We were getting suspicious that our mecanic had an fix alert build in that was connected to our Roatan trip savings account...

Anyways. We finally arrive . Of course the taxi driver tells us that Dolphin Hotel is the only place that has room available this late of the day, which turned out to be a lie. By the way they still do that to people arriving late in the day.

We go for a little stroll to find a bite to eat. First impression of West End was THATS IT?. Thats gonna be 4 long weeks. It seemed so small.

Next day we got a nicer place to stay at Geophies Hide away and met dutch Ron. We are still big friends. Shared a lot of rum and stories and still do by the way when we get a chance to visit.
We went diving every day. Everything was beautiful an pristine. Huge groupers the size of me, my dive buddies.
Then remember it was fall 1998. Hurricane season. Well of course Hurricane Mitch passed by to say hello. Was interesting days. No power -no water- no internet. Well internet was not very common those days anyway.
So the news about the storm was sparesly. Rudys family decided we should empty the concrete watercistern and use it as a shelter. All right so we did. We were all prepared. But Mitch just kept harassing neighboring island, Guanaja. But that was still very close. The power of nature surely flexed its muscles and toyed with us for days.

You might think, thats it, never coming back. No, seeing people helping each other in the community effort at getting things back on track and collect to them that lost stuff was the most amazing thing. Unfutunately we had to leave a week early because of family issues back home.
Thanked everyone for a great time, and told Ron, Hi dutch boy, we will be back and be your neighbour again.

Went back to Denmark sold the rest of our belongings (the car we sold to the mecanic, well he knew what he/we had replaced all parts possible). So we packed our bags once again in January 1999.
Arrive in Miami for Superbowl. Great! No room under a $100 to be found. Welcome to Miami!!!
Airport luggagecarts works though, you just have to move around when the vacumcleaner woman approaches you.


We arrive, and people here all the same, maybe a few new faces. And Ron, the dutch boy had not left. Happy days to see a good friend.

So now we here. No plans at all. We dive and gain experience of the reef and the islandlife, how things work.
Uwe does his divemaster and later instructor. Get involved in maintain and troubleshoot aircompressors, boat engines and scuba equipment.
I learn go diving without Uwe being my dive buddy. Clyde assures he will look after me. And he did.
I get to be the diveshop girl (not quite a manager yet), but observe what to do and not to do if it was my shop.


At some point down the road we decide to leave the island to explore other places.
4 months later we are back! And it was great to come back home. We missed it so much. We got our old jobs back too. Just like that.

And then we got friends with Tyll.
And a whole new chapter and challenges began with taking over Tyll's Dive.

To be continued.