For the first time in my undersea life I felt equal to, if not better than, the fish I swam with. Sure, they have built in fins, but the portable ones I wore were bigger and stronger. An angelfish smiled at me, a triggerfish winked. I gave them both the index finger to thumb dive signal showing that all was well. I looked at my depth gauge. We were at 120 feet (36.5 metres) as I began my silent chant "Let's dive deeper, let's dive deeper". But just then the divemaster made a sharp left and we began our ascent up an underwater canyon, just like the one we'd come down. Within seconds my fish friends had gone away and I no longer wanted to swim to the bottom of the sea.

 
 I had just experienced the "martini effect" or "raptures of the deep", sexy, fun names for nitrogen narcosis, the buzz you get from having nitrogen dissolve into your blood stream. This effect occurs when breathing compressed air at depths usually beyond 100 feet, or 30 metres. We made our way up to a depth of 25 feet (7 metres and a bit) where new fun awaited. We spent the next 45 minutes decompressing while we swam through a labyrinth of tunnels, canyons and caves. And as an added bonus we could almost swim home from this dive site. It's less than a three minute boat ride from the shores of Half Moon Bay.   
 
 
Last August, Elenka had rotator cuff surgery on her right shoulder. She was instructed not to do any heavy lifting for a year. I started telling everyone that she developed this condition in honour of my novel, Bad Blood, a mystery with a baseball backdrop which was published around the same time as her surgery. She told those same people that it wasn't that kind of injury and that in fact she hates even watching baseball, let alone playing the stupid game. Then she got her list of things she could and couldn't do. Right at the top of the list: "Do not resume pitching baseballs until one year has passed."
 
 
And that is why we went to Roatan, where aside from Monkey La Las - a combination of rum, vodka, kahlua and Bailey's - there is no heavy lifting.  
 
 
The site I just wrote of was called Hole in the Wall. I was so fascinated by it that I went to Youtube in search of videos of the Hole. There were many, but none were very good. Then I remembered that special video from the liveaboard dive boat that we spent a week on last year in the Andaman Sea, off the coast of Thailand. My dive buddy is a dentist turned videographer ... at least for a couple of weeks each year, named Taz. I thought of myself as his assistant. But my job was simply to stay the hell out of the way. Even if you're not into octopi or whale sharks click the link. https://vimeo.com/m/92985354  The music will be enough to keep you glued to the screen.