Roatan Adventures

I had several episodes of the brush-with-the-famous variety...
Movie-wise, I once worked on the set of a made-for-TV film called "The Bermuda Triangle". It was mostly shot on the Honduran island of Roatan, because there were open ocean trained dolphins there. My husband was the consultant trainer and I was the safety coordinator. It was not a very good script, I'm sorry to say, and clichés and implausibilities abounded.
 
There was, of course, the "young and handsome male hero" and of course the "pretty young female" and, you guessed it, they ended up together. The pretty young female was played by a somewhat obscure Australian (read: still affordable) named… Naomi Watts. And frankly, I don't have any juicy anecdotes about her because she was extremely reserved. She didn't mingle, she read quietly until it was her time to shoot. Very low profile. But she was extremely pretty in a brittle sort of way. I promptly forgot her after the shoot, but she sure made her way up. Are you impressed? I'm not.



Anthony’s Key Resort, Roatan. Photo Credit: unknown

On a funnier note, funnier for the others that is, on one shoot (I worked on several there and I hardly remember which was which) we decided on the first night to play a game of beach volleyball. I came from Freeport where I was used to just dive for the ball, because it was all thick soft sand. I did the same at the Roatan resort...except there, it was a very shallow layer of sand covering old coral. I dove for the ball twice before I realized it was a truly bad idea. Too late: both knees and both top of my feet were raw and bleeding freely, incrusted with gritty sand. (And I'm the safety coordinator: brilliant!) It really needed to be cleaned up so I went to the "doctor's” little clinic. This clinic was sort of improvised and held the island's recompression chamber. The "doctor" was the island's Methodist pastor and...veterinarian! He cleaned my wounds so heartily and enthusiastically that it took me everything not to scream. At least he didn't pat me on the head at the end.
 
For the rest of the week, I had to get in the very salty ocean four and five times a day (anybody who's tried open wounds in salt water knows what it feels like). The crew would see the respected, competent safety coordinator blanch every time she had to literally peel her wetsuit on and off raw knees (because no bandage would stick) and with huge, evil, sadistic grins would say: "Ouch, that looks so painful!" Bastards! :)
 
This all reminds me of a friend of my husband's, in the Bahamas. He was a conchie Joe fisherman (conchie Joe means white Bahamian) who owned dozens of cats, a kind but rather primitive sort of chap. He showed up one day with his arm in a sling and proceeded to tell us what had happen to him. With a perfectly straight face, he explained how he had gone to see his vet and his vet had set the arm and told him how to take care of it. I had to walk away to hide my giggles. Bless his fisherman heart, when he got hurt, he went and consulted his vet!
 
All right, enough memories for today. My garden calls.