It's been six years since I went scuba diving as an adaptive scuba diver. When I was last in the water, I was in Cozumel, Mexico, with a group of disabled divers from Colorado, chasing our wanderlust for the magic of breathing underwater as paralyzed divers. Then Covid happened, life happened, and scuba took a backseat. So, when the opportunity arose this last year to go diving again with a new group in my local town of Denver called the Denver Adapted Divers, I wasn't sure if I was up for the challenge as it had been so long. But as I approached the 10th anniversary of my spinal cord injury, it seemed apropos to challenge myself and once again take the plunge and go where many people, even walkers, don't go: into the deep ocean.
So off I went to Roatan, Honduras, Bay of Islands, a small, unassuming island only 48 miles long and 5 miles wide just off the mainland of Honduras. Roatan is considered a “coral island” sitting on top of the ancient Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world, second to Australia. Beautiful in its own right, this jungle island has the ultimate laid-back feel, where the weather is sweat-dripping, humid, hot, and the water is turquoise, crystal clear. It is paradise.
Our group stayed at the Mayan Princess Hotel and Dive Resort, a modest hotel with beautiful grounds and the most accommodating islander staff in the western portion of the island. From the moment we stepped onto the property, our entire group felt like family to these local folks who dedicated their lives to entertaining foreign guests worldwide. They could not have been any nicer or more accommodating, even physically reconstructing my shower pre-arrival to allow for a roll-in shower chair. I knew I was in good hands.
The uniqueness of this property is, in fact, their dive operation, Mayan Divers, which is specifically tailored to scuba divers with disabilities. Having dove with other international dive operators worldwide, I can confidently state that the entire crew at Mayan Divers put their heart and soul into facilitating disabled scuba divers to experience their love of the ocean without ever considering disabilities as any limitation to scuba diving. They utilize a sequential system of transfers from an on-land wheelchair to a specialized flotation beach trike that is floated out into the ocean to the back of a dive boat, where the diver is propelled up a crane into the boat right into a manual wheelchair. This might seem frightening to most, and it did for me at first. But after experiencing their system firsthand, I realized these guys knew exactly what they were doing. It was smooth, seamless, and so refreshing to work collaboratively with a crew in such an environment where they were learning from us, and we were learning from them. They valued my input and listened to me at every turn.