Traveling Applejax

Mike and I have been keeping a wary eye on Dean for the past several days…not that it’s done us much good. He goes where he pleases, scuba plans be damned!

We left Tela and headed to La Ceiba, a town a bit farther east along the northern coast of Honduras. At this point, all weather forecasts were placing Dean farther and farther north of us, making it unlikely we’d even see much rain or wind from it. It looked like the eye of the storm was making a bee-line for Playa del Carmen — one of our first stops on this epic journey, and on the very tippy-top of Mexico’s Yucatan penninsula. Armed with this good news, we took a ferry to Utila, which is one of Honduras’ Bay Islands.

Of course, by the time we settled ourselves into a hotel and planned a few dives for the following day, the forecasts had changed. We sat down to a delicious lunch to discover that Dean was skirting the southern coast of Jamaica. Plus, those forecasters were beginning to say that Dean would probably hit farther south, maybe around the middle of the Yucatan penninsula. Still plenty far from us, but edging closer.

We woke up this morning to head to our scuba class (we decided to get our “Nitrox” specialty, which will allow us to breathe enriched air and have longer dive times), only to find that they’d closed the shop for the next 2 days. You see, Dean is still edging his way south, and now we’re more likely to feel a bit more of his wrath.

So we’ve been bumming around for the entire day, listening to the fear-mongering of the local loudmouths. There has been some rain and a few periods of gusty wind, but mostly it’s been pretty boring. The most potentially exciting thing that could happen is that we might get flooded out of our hotel room. We’re pretty close to the shore and the water level has definitely been rising. Our hotel host has given us a key to one of the upstairs rooms in case this becomes a problem.

So now we just sit and wait. Maybe by Wednesday we’ll get our scuba diving in. I don’t really know what our plans are for now, but as always I’ll keep you posted.

The answer to the last poll is “Juan and his double-barrel shotgun”. The house in Antigua was pretty well protected with the high walls, embedded glass bottles, steel door, caged peephole, barbed wire, electrified razor wire, and the dog. We never saw a shotgun, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t tucked away somewhere, just in case. I’ll try to think of a new poll ASAP — gotta keep you on your toes.

Well, I guess I’ll sign off now. Good luck to all the friends we’ve made along the way who are farther north and in the path of the storm!