What is the salary of a dive instructor on Roatan? Well, I get a LOT of emails from people asking me what dive instructors here on Roatan make (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 dive instructors make?You can read more about it in my tipping guidelines for diving on Roatan, but the short answer is: dive instructors here do not make very much money. A few dive shops pay a small salary (around ...
Real Talk
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 ...
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 ...
A Year of Awesome.
Cubicle Throwdown turned one year old this week! (source)How can I even begin to recap the last year? It's been a year since I first came to Roatan and learned to dive. It's been a year since I fell in love with this little island, and felt the pull of the 'Roatan Vortex'. It's been a year since I decided that life is short, and I'm not spending the best years of it sitting behind a desk doing something I don't enjoy.I had no idea what I was doing when I set up ...
I’m awesome.
I've been a little lost this last week. I don't really know what I'm doing or where I'm going next....I kind of do, but not really. I have plane tickets but I'm not sure if I should. I don't have a plan, or what I consider a plan. I always have people telling me how courageous and confident I am, and how awesome my life must be, but I don't really feel like that right now. I feel useless, drifting aimlessly and not all that cool to be honest. I'm being pretty hard on myself. I need to get ...
Expats don’t have everything. Weird, right?
I have gotten a lot of feedback on Facebook and here about my current adventure. Ever since I decided I wanted to walk away from my corporate 9-5 job and live on a tropical island, I have had people telling me all kinds of things.You're so lucky. I wish I could have your life. Your adventures are amazing, I'll never be able to do that. I'm jealous of you.In no way to I want to discredit how fucking awesome my life is. It's crazy, it has its ups and downs, but it is pretty amazing and I ...
It’s here.
The end of the instructor course is today, and I'm already an Emergency First Responder Instructor as of this afternoon... I have written and in-water exams the next two days and then it's (almost) over! I am going to do my specialty instructor courses next week, then do some fun diving, and then take a week out of the water to let my legs heal. They are still destroyed and they are a lot better when I stay out. Then it's time to find a job - I'm still a little unsure of how that's going to go. ...
The countdown is on.
I don't have much to say today. I'm having a stressful time with everything except my dive instructor stuff. I only have two more days in the classroom/water and then Thursday the instructor exams start. I wish I was a little more positive today, but sometimes you just have a bad day.In the meantime, here's a photo of me being a rockstar with two Caribbean reef sharks (see if you can find both). I'm on the left. Enjoy. ...
I can’t believe it.
Wow. I can't believe this happened. But it did.I got homesick. For the first time. EVER.I've never felt homesick during any traveling I've done. I've been here in Roatan for just under two months now and to be honest I'm a little surprised that a pang of homesickness has already hit.Do you want to know what caused it?This.My friend posted this on Facebook and it came up in my newsfeed while I was sitting online at the dive shop, and I felt my throat tighten up and my eyes ...
Hello world. I’m Rika!
This post has been hinted at several times in the past, and the day has arrived for me to announce myself to the vast reaches of cyberspace (or to my mom and my little group of readers who still come here to read all my ramblings - thank you!)Hi! I'm Rika. and this is what I look like in my cubicle.I haven't been able to let you all know who I was. Sorry! I had to hide my face in photos and use my initials instead of my name because there were still so many people ...