Writings By Date| San Pedro: The Perfect Place to Hide Away | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
What is there to do in the sleepy town of San Pedro? Dive. Sail. Snorkel. Dive some more. Go to church. Drink Belikin Beer. Dive the next day. That's about it.
Fortunately, we were there to dive, or more specifically, to learn how to dive. Our exhaustive searching among the considerable competition on the island (i.e.: frantically looking up dive shops on the web six hours before we left the United States) led us to the "Grumpy and Happy Dive School". The name, right off the bat, held a certain appeal to the two of us (it seemed all too familiar, somehow), and the couple that runs it put a lot of time and attention into their email reply, even going so far as to considerably help us in making arrangements for where we would stay. Before we even arrived in Belize, we could tell we had found some good people here.
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| Grumpy and Happy |
This couple, Lorne and Jolene, actually comprise 100% of the employees of Grumpy and Happy. Coming from Canada, they realized their lifelong dream of becoming diving instructors several years earlier, then decided their lifelong dream would be much happier somewhere warmer than Canada. Together, they make an interesting couple. Jolene, a thin blonde woman, is very deliberate and meticulous, while Lorne, a burly, dark-skinned man, is very casual in his demeanor. Lorne is the one who's addle-minded, even though Jolene is the blonde one. They are a great balance for one another, and it's entertaining to see how they play off each other, combining a bit of performance for us and competition over us, all at once.
But Lorne and Jolene offered us much more than just a student-teacher relationship, we were being introduced into their lives. Our instruction took place in their living room, and it almost seemed as though we spent more time learning about them, and sharing stories of our great adventure, than we did learning about diving. Actually, that probably is the case, since we had to keep waiting day after day to finish our training because of my illness. (It was tropical storm Michelle's fault, honest!) Or maybe that's just because the diving videos were so cheesy. By the end of our time with them, we felt that we'd gotten more than a scuba diving certification, we'd gotten new friends as well. Now they're talking about joining up with us to go diving somewhere next year. They seem to have a lot of optimism about how good we'll get in just a year, but we'll be happy to see them anyway, cause we think they'll be able to get us into those secret dive places they only tell instructors about. Okay, and they're also a lot of fun.
