Team Roatan 2009 - worldvets.org

Greetings from Roatan, Honduras! In the interest of full disclosure, the team has actually already been here for a few days…it’s just difficult to convince anyone to sit in front of a computer for long enough to write a blog. Apparently when you’re staying in a gorgeous 5 bedroom house with huge back porch, pool, swim-up bar, and a few short steps down to a private beach, people tend to find better things to do with their time.
The group arrived on three separate flights on Saturday, each of which was met by Sandra, our local contact who seems to know everyone on the entire island. She and her husband Al moved down here full time a few years ago, and (not surprisingly) seem to be pretty happy with their decision. Sandra brought each carload to the grocery store to stock up on some food and drinks for the house, and by around 3pm we were all here, ready to start enjoying ourselves. Each of the doctors was given a bedroom, and the rest of the team has chosen to pile into “the frat house”, which is a guest house on the property with two bedrooms. The view from the back of the house is like nothing I’ve ever seen, with the pool’s edge framing the bottom, a variety of tropical trees on the sides, a huge sky (at night full of incredibly bright stars) up above, and the ocean straight ahead. The water is crystal clear and nice and warm, with some turquoise areas above the sand and some darker blue spots above the coral and grass. Some team members wasted no time in kayaking and snorkeling right off the dock that’s 100 feet from our house.
We spent the first few hours getting to know each other, and then headed down to the West End, which is a nice area of the island with a number of restaurants and shops. Half of the team went to a Thai restaurant and the other half to a grill, both of which were situated directly over the water, making for some beautiful views as we ate. I had the conch fritters, which were delicious if a bit tough, which came with a nice spicy bbq sauce. The group that went to the grill then ambled over to a bar on the street, where we grabbed a few beers and most of us sampled the island’s specialty drink, the “monkey la la.” Personally, I was too embarrassed to actually order a drink with that name, so I kind of mumbled and may have called it “that monkey thing”, but either way they were delicious. Back at the house we all met up and spent a few more hours hanging out before everyone passed out after some very long days of traveling.
I’m fairly confident in saying that I’ve never been quite as happy to wake up at 7am as I was on Sunday…in the guest house the sun was shining, the breeze flowing, the birds singing (maybe a bit too loudly), and I was ready to get going on our first adventure of the week. Sandra had set up a dolphin encounter for the entire group at a small resort just down the street. They gave us an incredible deal, and by noon we were on a boat headed to a small island where the encounter was to take place. The first part of the program was a demonstration with a few trainers and the specific dolphins that they work with 6 days a week. My group was with a 4 year old dolphin named Mr. French, who performed his duties very well, and sure knew when he was supposed to get some fish for entertaining the gringos. We all got to pet Mr. French, rub his tummy, and in general get a close look at him…being nerdy animal lovers we managed to get in a few anatomy questions during the presentation. For the record, dolphins have uniform teeth, make sounds from their blow holes, and play hard enough to give each other some gnarly scars all over their bodies. After watching a few impressive tricks, it was time for our “free swim” with the pod of 14 dolphins.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but the free swim was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. We had the entire (very large) pen to our little group of 16, which was a great bonus. It took a few minutes for us to find their favorite spot in one large corner of the pen, but once we did it seemed like they were everywhere…and it turns out dolphins aren’t very shy. Most of them were comfortable enough to swim right alongside or past us, and it was very easy to just reach a hand out and pet them as they went by. It also turns out that when a dolphin swims up to you with its mouth wide open it’s pretty scary, as a few of our team members found out, but I think they just enjoyed freaking us out a bit. I figured out a little trick with about 10 minutes left in the encounter, which made the end pretty interesting. If you rub your rubber swim fins together it makes a high pitched sound that mimics the dolphin vocalization, and once I started doing that I had a few curious guys coming right over to me to check out what was going on. One just floated in front of me for a minute or so, listening to the sound and letting me pet him, and a few others circled around me for a while. We all could have stayed in there for a long time, but after a half hour our free swim was up, so we reluctantly swam back in to the beach.
After the encounter I went with a group back to the West End, while the other half decided to walk down the beach back to the house. We chose a new restaurant to go to based on the specials and the hard-working barrel smoker up on the deck that smelled incredible. We all figured we had earned a round of beers and monkey la la’s (I feel ridiculous even writing it) and were pleasantly surprised to find out the food there was very good and relatively inexpensive. For anyone out there keeping score, I had a few tacos and the whole fish special, which was a deep fried red snapper. Abbey promised that if I ate one of the eyes she would do the same, and we both went through with it. We survived, but it’s not necessarily something that I would recommend.
Many of us took quick naps in the late afternoon, and based on Cathy’s recommendation went to a bar that last year’s Roatan team loved, called The Tranquil Seas. It was the quintessential tropical spot, and I don’t think I could write a description that could do it justice. It literally feels like drinking in a luxury tree house…probably because that’s exactly what it is. There was live music, good food, and to be honest with anyone reading this I’m getting antsy from having been writing for a half hour (even though I’m doing it on the porch overlooking the water). I’ll just say that a good time was had by all, and I’m going to leave this morning’s activities to the next blog writer, since I’m ready to head down to the beach. Plus we got some beautiful fresh fish and shrimp from the market for dinner tonight, so I need to go for a swim so I’ll be hungry enough to eat way too much for my own good. For the record, we did set up the clinic this morning, and will be starting the free surgical and health services as of tomorrow morning. It was easy to forget that we’re actually here to provide some critical services for the animals of the island, and everyone is excited to get started.
This will probably be my only blog entry, so I’d like to thank everyone on the trip for making it an incredible experience. Cathy, Sandra, the doctors, and all the techs and assistants have been amazing…I’m looking forward to working hard for the next three days and hopefully learning quite a few things along the way that I’ll be able to take with me when I start off in vet school. Ok, it’s beach time.

Matt Katz

---

---