Could you live off a dive instructor's wage on Roatan?

I get a LOT of emails from people asking me what I make as a dive instructor here on Roatan (hint: not a lot), and what it costs to live here (hint: a lot). Since inquiring minds want to know, here you go:

How much do you make?

You can read more about it in my tipping guidelines for diving on Roatan, but the short answer is: I work at a dive shop where I make a salary. I work 6 days a week and get paid $25 a day. That's $150/week, or about $600/month. (All dollar amounts in this post are in USD.) THIS IS THE ONLY MONEY I CAN 100% FOR SURE CAN COUNT ON HAVING EVERY MONTH. Unless I get sick. Sick days do not come with working under the table in foreign countries so if I don't go in, I get nothing. Weird, right?

If people are awesome and tip out the shop on their bill when they dive, this gets pooled and distributed once a week between the dive instructors and boat captains. I can't count on this at all. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes it's nothing. This week I'm getting a grand total of $7. That blows. A couple weeks ago my weekly tipout was $196. So you never know. If people are awesome and tip me in hand, I split it half and half with my boat captain. I keep track of my tips and have been averaging $75-100/week....but it's really inconsistent.

If I get diving courses, I get a 10% commission on the course price. The other instructor at the shop and I split the commissions so it's fair (just in case one person ends up getting a bunch of courses and the other one doesn't). So I really get 5% (but I get 5% off the ones she does too). I've had months where we had zero courses, but usually I make between $30-100/month on course commissions. This is extremely low for dive instructors on Roatan. Partly because I split it with my co-worker, but partly because the resort my dive shop is at is more popular for fun divers, not as a place to do your courses.

(It should be noted that this pay structure is somewhat unusual for dive instructors here. You can read more about the other ways in my post about tipping guidelines for diving on Roatan.)

So guess what? That's it, that's all. I can count on my $600/month salary, and maybe up to $500/month in tips & course commissions, but not always.




What does it cost to live there?

Short answer: probably more than you think.

Roatan is not mainland Honduras. Honduras is a dirt cheap, third world Central American country. Roatan is a touristy island. Touristy + island = expensive.

Here's a breakdown of where my money goes each month:

• Rent: $400/month for a tiny studio apartment in West End. I have hot water (electric) and no A/C. My electricity, water and gas for the stove are all included. This is a typical price in West End.
• Groceries: about $250/month at the American-style supermarket here. AKA overpriced shit but there isn't anywhere else to get groceries. I sometimes get veggies off the veggie trucks that drive around but it's not that much cheaper than the store.

(Did you notice I'm already over my salary of $600/month just with rent and groceries?)

• Cell phone: I paid $40 for a knockoff piece of crap Korean fake Blackberry type thing to use with prepaid minutes. It's garbage but whatever, I didn't want to use my iPhone cause it would get stolen in about six seconds. I pay about $5-10/month buying minutes for the phone.
• Internet: I have to use a 3G internet stick at home because that's just what you do here apparently. Anyway it costs me $25/month to recharge it.
• My dog: she eats $20/month of food (at least the dog food here is cheap) and I like to get her treats and stuff when I can afford it.
• Home insurance back in Vancouver: $30/month covers all my shit I left in a storage unit. Also my laptop and dive gear that I have here.
• Travel/medical/dive insurance: I paid for six months at a time, but it works out to close to $75/month for all 3 types.
• Storage unit back in Vancouver: $55/month. This is an amazing price!
• Scooter: I have to fill that bad boy up with gas about every 3-4 days. It costs me $5 to fill it. That ends up being $40ish/month or so for my transportation here. Before I had this, I was paying $10/week to take the van to work (and had an hour extra on my commute every day), and paying taxis to go to the grocery store and stuff. The scooter is cheaper.

So those are the things I need to have. And the total is already $905!

Then there are things that I can only have IF I make enough tips that month:

• Going out - food & drinks: I didn't come down here to stay at home all the time! I love going out with my friends to eat or a wild Friday night. But it doesn't come cheap... going out for lunch usually ends up costing around $10-15, dinner maybe $20 or less... alcohol for me (local price...there are two prices at the bars here! sorry tourists!) is $2/beer or $2.50-3/mixed drink. I also have a small cupcake addiction that costs me $1.50/week. All these things can add up FAST!
• Shopping: the nice thing about Roatan is there's basically nowhere I want to buy clothes or shoes, or anything really. But sometimes I like to get things for myself...what have I bought the last couple months? A reef fish ID book ($50), a rice cooker ($25), new sheets because the ones that came with this place had a weird stain ($25) and a used yoga mat ($15). I wouldn't normally spend $100+/month buying random crap for myself, but you get the point.
• Massages: I know, I know. This is really just reserved for special occasions! But I would love for you all to come see what I do at work all day and tell me I don't deserve one! I haul dive tanks and gear in wheelbarrows like a damn mule from the shop 300ft through sand down the beach to the dock, then out of the wheelbarrow and on and off the boat and then after the dive break it all down, wheel the tanks to the compressor room about 400ft away off the beach, and take the gear back to the shop and rinse and store all of it. It's an incredibly physical job, mostly due to the absolutely retarded set up of my dive shop. So I need a massage every once in awhile! Luckily my lovely friend here does them, and charges me $55 for 1.5 hours! Please, no one from Thailand tell me how cheap they are there. I know. This is the best I can do here.
• DVDs: I don't have a TV. All I really have for entertainment at home at night is my computer. There are guys who walk around on the street selling burned DVDs and sometimes I buy them (but not if it's anyone official asking!). I get 3 DVDs for 10 bucks... I guess it's not bad. With only a 3G internet stick (see above), streaming anything online or downloading is out.

So there you have it! How much I make and how much it costs me to live here, in a nutshell. You can see that it can be pretty tough to make a go of it here unless you're making a significant amount of cash. Yes, I made more money back in Canada. Yes, I had many more things I got to spend my money on in Canada. No, I don't want to move back there!

A little Saturday reading.

It's Saturday, and that means it's my day off. It also means I'm too hungover to write anything coherent because we celebrated 4 new instructors passing their exams last night. Work-related hazard.

here's a quote i like. what does it have to do with this post? nothing. read the sentence above the photo again.

So in the Saturday spirit (aka I can't do a real post), here are some links I've been saving for you guys:

Slow Down and Enjoy Longer Dives - tips for scuba divers to increase their bottom time.

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed - great business psychology article about a traveler's return to the 9-5 world and the culture of the 8 hour workday.

45 Jobs You Can Do While Traveling the World - and how to get them.

8 Natural Remedies Every Traveler Should Carry - I am a big fan of natural health, and I do most of these!

And just cause I'm jonesing a bit for my homeland: 38 Reasons Everything is Better in Canada - DUH!

Roatan Month 9 Roundup

9 months into this adventure, and I still can't believe how far it's taken me!

enjoying the sunset off the west end divers dock

Let's check in on what I got up to this month:

• A quick check in and update after being slammed at work
• I finally got my own place in West End (which reminds me that a full tour is still coming!)
• I put together a little list for diving etiquette on Roatan that I really hope people Google and find before they come here
• I laid it all out on the internet about things I've learned as an expat, which was retweeted all over Twitter!
• I took you all on a virtual dive and dedicated it to my mom for Mother's Day

The next month is going to be pretty tame as I work and save money for my upcoming adventures this summer (heading out for a two week work assignment on a megayacht in the Bahamas at the end of June, and then visiting Canada for three weeks in August). I would love to hear what you're all up to for the next month!

I'll leave you with a video some of my divers took this week... if you've ever wanted to see where I work or watch me give a half-assed dive briefing (disclaimer: I had been diving with this group for two weeks already so detailed briefings were out the door), then take a look:




Remember, you can see all my monthly roundup posts by clicking on the "roundup" tag below!

Come for a dive with me!

I know, I know. You'd all really like to come diving with me, right? Since most of you can't, I'm going to take you on one with me in this post. Let's go!

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT KASEY DYKES 2013 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. USED WITH PERMISSION.

Here's your dive briefing:

photo credit: noel veroba

We're heading out to a dive site called Magic Bobby and we're going on a lionfish hunt! Roatan has a protected marine park around it, but lionfish are an invasive species here. I have a license from the marine park to spearfish (lionfish only!) inside the park. So on our dive today I'm going to be hunting for your dinner! We're going to drop onto the wall and head down to a max depth today of 90ft, and slowly work our way up to the plateau. Make sure to check all the nooks and crannies for lionfish, if you see one - give me the underwater hand signal and I'll go spear it! I'll be leading from the front, and if you hear my shaker then look my way - it means I found something cool to point out to you! Air consumption permitting, we're going to stay down for 55 minutes including our 3 minute safety stop at the end. Any questions?

Get your gear on, do your buddy check, and let's go diving!

Everyone okay? Follow me!

Right away I spy with my little eye....my two favorite fish - a queen triggerfish (top) and a queen angelfish (bottom):

Shake shake shake! Come see the green moray eel I just about bumped into:

Don't worry, he's not trying to bite me - it's just respiration! Green moray eels open and close their mouths constantly to breathe.

Ooooooooooh! Look what I found! Trunkfish party! This is the first time I've seen more than two at a time, and there were actually four...one didn't make it in the photo:

Yes, that's me squealing through my regulator. I can't see a trunkfish and not squeal. They are retardedly cute...all boxy and tiny fins and cow eyes and perfect little circular mouths. I heart trunkfish :)

Well, let's get to work. Lionfish hunting time!

I'm carrying a bucket with a cross cut into the lid - once I spear a lionfish, I jam it through the cross and the lionfish stays in the bucket while my spear slides out. If you look closely in the photo, my spear is coming out from behind my tank... you can see the elastic band of my hawaiian sling style polespear peeking up. I carry it up while I'm hunting so I don't accidentally bang it into the delicate reef. And I'm wearing my awesome shark-print skullcap because my masks like to rip my hair out. So every dive I get my badass cap on to protect my hair!

Uh oh! Look who I found... your dinner! I'm eye-to-eye with this dude, and he's going down:

Snap, crackle, pop, and the little bugger is in my bucket! As Borat says, great success!

Let's keep going and see what else we can find on the reef today... how about a caribbean reef squid?

Maybe some blue chromis? Such a pretty color!

Did you notice the Nassau grouper following us for the whole dive? That's George!! He's my buddy. He follows me around every time I come to this dive site, hoping for a lionfish snack. The dive shop that used to dive these sites before us would spear lionfish and feed them to the grouper to try to get them to become lionfish predators, but I don't do it because it doesn't train groupers to hunt lionfish, it just trains them to follow divers around. George and I will usually play for the whole dive though, with him darting around me and I'll snap my fingers at him, blow bubbles at him or pretend to grab his tail (not for real though, we don't touch in the marine park!) He's such a ham, and loves to pose for photos for my divers:

It's time to head up for our three minute safety stop! Let's get back on the boat and head back to the dive shop.

photo credit: noel veroba

The boat is tied back up to the dock and it's time to clean the lionfish I got:

photo credit: tiffany hammond

And then we'll do it all again tomorrow! Isn't diving with me the best?

This post is dedicated to my kickass mom for Mother's Day today. She isn't able to come diving with me, so I decided to "take" her on a dive to celebrate today. Happy Mother's Day Mom, I LOVE YOU!

How Being an Expat Has Changed Me (or, I Never Knew I Could Drink This Much)

I'm almost coming up on a year in living on Roatan. Moving to this tiny island in the Caribbean has made me a different person. Slowly but surely, Roatan has pushed me, pulled me, stretched me and gotten under my skin and I'm changing. I think it's amazing how transplanting yourself into a foreign country can make you see yourself so differently.

Since becoming an expat here...

I've learned to cling less to others and rely on myself.

People come and go, and come and go here. It's a transient place. I'm far away from my family and lifelong friends. I'm a lot less dependent on other people and starting to figure my own shit out for myself. This is an area of my life that needs a lot of work. I'm not very good at it. When I was in university a long time ago, I got my car stuck in a snowdrift and called my mom...who lived in another city two hours away. What the hell was she going to do to help me? Jesus. I don't have a ton of people here that I can solidly count on so I've had to start relying on myself. So far it's going okay.

I've learned how to behave in social situations in a culture very different from home.

I have a lot of islander friends, and social norms here are different from Canada. Men and women are not equal, and if you're a gringa you better not try to argue with a male islander unless you want to get viciously made fun of, screamed at or smacked. In Canada, I have been known to intervene when I see domestic violence out in public. Here, I'd get shot for interfering in someone's business. It's hard for me to turn a blind eye to a lot that goes on here, but sometimes you have to accept that YOU came HERE and life runs with their rules, not yours. I saw a pregnant girl in the bathroom in the bar last night, drinking and doing lines of coke. I couldn't say anything. Sad. I also think nothing now of bribing police or the lady who stamps the passports. That was weird at first and I still don't have the finer points of it down, but I'm getting there. The thing is, you eventually realize you're at not at home anymore and you aren't going to change this new place. So it changes you.

I've learned some Island English.

Islanders here speak English with a lilting Caribbean accent, Spanish, and something they call Island English, or Island Talk. The technical term is Bay Island Creole but don't tell them that because gringos can't tell the islanders anything about this place (see the point above). It is nearly incomprehensible for foreigners, but I can understand about 60% of it now. I have no plans to tell my boat captains that I know what they're saying though!

.... and I've learned some Spanish.

I don't need it much here, mostly just for taxis because the islanders all speak English as their first language. But I am getting better at Spanish and can carry on a basic conversation now. I think everyone should be able to do this in whatever country they live in.

I've learned to relax.

I don't stress about how clean my house is, or if I've washed my hands before eating. I don't worry about if my clothes are a little dirty or have a stain on them. I don't care if the grocery store is out of limes. I feed my dog the cheapest brand of dog food and I've been in a 5 seat taxi with 8 people. I only wear makeup on Friday nights and I couldn't give two shits about the cellulite on my thighs. I don't get mad if a kid's soccer game or chickens block the road to work... I just get off my bike and wait around like everyone else. Maybe buy a bag of juice from the kid who magically appears with them during traffic jams. But I don't get frustrated with that stuff anymore. Literally none of these things matter here, and once I got that, I let go of a lot of things that would drive me crazy in Canada.

I've learned to keep my friends close, but my wallet closer.

Roatan is a sunny place for shady people. Unfortunate but true. Foreigners are walking targets for locals to try to somehow get money from. Even now that they know I live and work here, some people still seem to think I'm a magical money fountain. Please tell me where I go to claim this fountain because I have exactly $36 until I get paid in two weeks.

I've learned to drink.

And I'm from CANADA you guys, we're really good at this already. But for some reason here, you don't get hangovers. Or not as bad as at home. I have drank entire bottles of rum here and been fine the next day. If I did that in Canada, I'd be in bed for a week. Drinking is pervasive here and can be an all-day every-day thing if you're not careful. I'm doing better now, but it's really easy to let this get out of hand. I'm keeping it to Friday nights now. (But sometimes Saturdays too. And Thursdays. Whatever.)

I've learned to ask other expats for advice.

Some people who have been here forever just know everything. I'm forever calling people and asking "Where can I get ________?" or "How do I do _________?" I'm so grateful that there's people here who can answer things like that.

I've learned to do a lot of things I didn't know I could do.

Teach people how to scuba dive. 

Give a cat a needle. 

Ride a scooter down a sketchy ass dirt road to work every day. Jump off a two story restaurant into the ocean. Go bushwacking in the jungle on pirate booty hunts. Carry those huge water jugs all the way into my house and get them into the dispenser without spilling it everywhere. Push wheelbarrows full of scuba tanks up and down a sandy beach all day long. Freedive to 60ft. Swim with sharks. 

How to do the wine... kind of. 

Eat mediocre food day after day after day after day after day.....

I've learned to live with less.

I don't have a car (although I have a scooter now!), a blender, air conditioning or a water cooler. I can't buy new clothes or get a haircut every six weeks. I do still get people coming from the States to bring me stuff from Whole Foods though. I'm a work in progress!

I've learned that I'm not always right.

I had such a hard time here learning to accept and believe the locals when they tell me things. They always end up being right. Once I started listening to them, my life here got a lot easier.

I've learned that a small town is the same no matter what country it's in.

I went from a city of 4 million people to a village of 300. I wasn't used to everyone being in my business, and my decisions being called out in a public way (and my bad decisions never being forgotten, apparently). I have to be nice to people I don't necessarily like for the sake of keeping peace in my little community. I have to be careful what I say and do around certain people.This has been hard to get used to. I also know I can show up anywhere at anytime and probably have a friend there, and that I can name someone I know if I'm ever in trouble anywhere and that can probably get me out of it. It has its pros and cons.

I've learned to say yes.

Yes to skinny dipping in the ocean, yes to potlucks on the beach. Yes to staying up later, one more rum & fresca, rope swing off a boat, leaving on a yacht, taking in stray animals, giving a dollar to the bum at the grocery store, dancing with a guy you'll later regret just a bit, drinking beers on the dock watching the sunset with your friends and your dog. Just say yes. Unless a sketchy guy in the bar asks you to go to his friend's house because they have "a mountain of cocaine there". Then say no. Trust me.

I've learned who I actually miss from home.

Some people have fallen off my radar and when I think hard about it, I don't care that much. Some people I would pay a million dollars to just come here RIGHT NOW and be here with me. It's not who I thought it would be when I left.

I've learned that I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

Or if I'm even going to grow up. Sorry parents.

I've learned that even though living on a Caribbean island might not be all it's cracked up to be, it's still pretty fuckin awesome.

There's nowhere else I'd rather be and nothing else I'd rather be doing right now. But I know when/if I leave, I won't be the same girl that arrived.

So you want to go diving on Roatan?

You just bought a plane ticket to Roatan? AWESOME.
You want to go diving? SWEET.

I'm a dive instructor. I work at a dive shop at a resort. I love diving. I don't love the administrative and logistical headaches that come with people who seem to leave their common sense at home when they come here on a dive holiday.

So, just in case they are Googling shit before their trip, may I present to you:

THINGS YOU JUST REALLY NEED TO DO IF YOU WANT TO GO DIVING ON ROATAN:

(I don't know if these are applicable everywhere. I've only worked on Roatan. Sorry dudes.)

(source)

1. You should probably make a reservation.

Unelss you're diving in West End, where there are tons of standalone dive shops so if one can't accommodate you, you can just try another shop.

Can someone please explain to me why in the name of all that is holy do people not make diving reservations when they're staying at an isolated dive shop or the hotel dive shops? If you're staying there, don't you kinda want to make sure they can take you? What are you going to do if they're full?

 I work at a shop which is kind of in the middle of nowhere at a really lovely secluded resort, and we get hotel guests ALL THE TIME who just show up and want to go diving, or do a course. Or they did all their e-Learning online and their confined water dives at home and want to to their open water checkout dives and get certified. Or it's a group of 8+ people (we don't even have boats that hold that many people). Uh, guys? Really? You don't want to check first that the dive shop can even take you out and do these before you do all that work? It's happened where we've had walk-ins for fun divers and courses that we've unfortunately had to turn away. We're a small operation, we don't run huge cattle boats of divers and there's only two instructors. Make a damn reservation. Just do it.

2. You should probably listen to the divemaster and boat captain.

Not if they're telling you crazy shit like dive your tank down to 100psi or go to 300ft. But if they're telling you to check for your mask, fins and wetsuit because the boat is about to leave for the dock, THEN CHECK. Cause guess what? If they tell you to check, and you don't, and you find out at the dive site that you don't have it, they're not going back so you can get it and you're still paying for that dive. Sorry bro. Your fault.

3. You should probably show up when you're told to show up.

If they tell you the boat leaves the dock at 8:30am and to be there no later than 8:20am then exactly why are you not on the dock at 8:20am? I really don't get this. Scuba diving is expensive so I'm pretty sure you can buy a watch. If you don't have one then just ask me which street vendor sells legit $5 watches here. I got your back.

4. You should probably show up when you say you're going to show up.

Dive boats have a limited number of spaces, and a lot of times I tell someone they can't go because the seat is full. If you just don't show up, you still have to pay for that dive AND you didn't go diving. So that's two things that suck. Plus someone else could have came on the boat in your spot and they might have tipped us, so we're losing out too. 24 hours notice is standard for cancelling a reservation. Don't be that guy.

5. You should probably tip your divemaster and captain.

If you get good service. If they haul around your BCD with 30lbs of weight in it (but if you're diving in the Caribbean with 30lbs then you really need to take a PPB course because that is just ridiculous). If you see them pushing the tanks to the dock through 200ft of sand in a wheelbarrow. If you take your gear off in the water and ask them to pull it up in the boat for you. If your kid is diving. If you had a problem underwater and they helped you with it. If they showed you some cool shit. If they only got a 12 minute lunch break because you wanted to tell them all about that time you went to Bonaire and saw the coolest crap of all time and then showed them every fish you like in the Reef Fish ID book for like an hour. We're in the customer service business. If you had a good time with us and everything went well, please tip. (See my tipping guidelines for diving on Roatan if you're not familiar with tipping, or how much to tip here.)

6. You should probably try to enjoy yourself.

You're on holidays and you're diving! Don't be miserable! Some people are so weird.


See guys, it isn't rocket science! Find a more comprehensive (and hilarious) list over at DiverWire. Diving is amazing, don't wreck the experience for yourself, your fellow divers or the dive shop staff by being inconsiderate. If you don't know something - ASK, follow instructions and you'll have an awesome dive trip!

Just me and Bobby McGee.

The time has come....for me to finally get my own place here in West End. I have been living with anywhere from one to six other people since I arrived here last August! My roommates decided to get their own place, and it was high time that I found my own digs as well. I think 28 is too old to still have roommates! I know some people love it and for the most part I've had positive experiences here, but it was just time for my own place and my own space. So it's just me and my dog now!

fastest move ever! one taxi ride, 4 friends, 15 minutes.

This tiny little studio is already starting to grow on me. I'm super lucky to have my friend Sarah at Bella Gypsy Sol living upstairs, and another friend in the other studio apartment next to me for a month. I'm going to give you a full tour once I get settled in but for now I have some unpacking to do!