Juan and I expected Bob and Mark to arrive in Puerto Lempira by plane. We spent some time checking out the "downtown" area of Puerto Lempira before heading to the airport.

They arrived just as we were finishing breakfast. After quickly dropping their stuff off at the hotel, we headed to Cauquira by panga to check on the status of the chamber Sub Ocean Safety had installed at the medical clinic.

At Cauquira, we first stopped at the home of one of the boat captains. Mark spent quite some time interviewing him and the captain was very candid in his responses. We learned here that the chamber in Cauquira had been shutdown by FUDENA (Fundacion de Desarrollo Nacional ), a domestic NGO that had taken over the day-to-day operations of the chamber from Sub Ocean Safety. Closure of the clinic was news to Bob and immediately became the new mission for the trip.

We learned when we got to the clinic that the doctor had injured her foot last October and left. The hyperbaric nurse was still there but, without medicines (they were under lock and key) and oxygen, the chamber couldn't be operated. For lack of O2 and a doctor, divers had been repeatedly turned away after arriving at the chamber. Bob worked himself into quite a lather over the situation and began making plans to contact the local and U.S. media, contacting the president of FUDENA and generally raising holy hell. Our itinerary had changed once again.

We went back to the captain's house to begin rounding up disabled divers living in the community. This meeting would give Mark a chance to interview them as a group. The meeting would be in a church a mile or two up the road; Bob had commandeered a motorcycle from the captain and the rest of us would take a boat to the church. Bob also wanted to stop back by the clinic after the church meeting. I pointed out that stopping at the clinic on the way to the church allowed us to take care of more things with fewer trips.

So back to the clinic we head. No sooner do we get there when a group of Americans come walking around the side of the clinic with, astounding as it sounds, a high-ranking officer of FUDENA. The Americans turn out to be members of a Rotary Internationl chapter in Idaho. Working with FUDENA as the on-site coordinator of their projects, they were in Central America to check on the progress of some Rotary sponsored community development projects. Out of the blue, we find ourselves face to face with a representative of the very organization Bob is so worked up over. With the Rotary members as an audience, Bob has a "heart-to-heart" conversation with the FUDENA representative who, in turn, insists he and FUDENA will get to the bottom of the situation. Our itinerary changes again, reverting back to our original plans. So went this entire trip.

With the clinic crisis substantially diminished, we head up the road to the church. Approximately 20 disabled divers had assembled. Mark spent an hour or so listening to their stories and opinions on the situation. Among the assembled divers was one who seemed to be in severe physical distress. At the urging of the other divers, he lifted his shirt to reveal an amazingly distended abdomen. The guy was clearly not faring well and Mark, the ever disinterested journalist, wondered aloud if there was anything we could do for him. On the road the night before, Rosa told us she'd heard there were American doctors visiting the hospital in Puerto Lempira. When I pointed out what I'd heard about the American doctors, we ended up offering to take the diver back with us. It was a heart wrenching situation; he'd been unable to get to the hospital sooner for lack of the $L60 ($3.20) to get a boat and money enough to live while he was there. In order to go with us, he needed to be accompanied by a family member who could look after him. Having no parents, his aunt said she would go. As it turned out, his sister went with us.

When we got back to Puerto Lempira, Mark and I headed to the hospital with the diver, his sister, Juan and four or five Moskito Indians who'd been following us all day. I was concerned the information about the American doctors was old or plain wrong and began to feel anxious as we neared the hospital.

One of being a white man traveling in that remote region of Honduras is that noone stops you from going whereever you're headed. In this case, we went right into the hospital and began wandering the wards in search of anyone speaking English. At first, it wasn't looking too good; maybe my information was indeed wrong. But, in the latest freaky accident of timing and circumstance, an American doctor walked through a side door in full surgical garb. He stopped on seeing us and we began explaining to Dr. Tim Fitzpatrick why we were there and the help we were hoping our disabled diver could get. Dr. Fitzpatrick took a few moments to examine the diver but explained that he was just then on his way into a surgical procedure that was expected to last until 8PM that evening. He was willing to come in early the next day to take a closer look at the diver if we could get him there by 7AM ahead of his existing schedule. He was also very interested in the Sub Ocean Safety's efforts on behalf of the divers and wanted to get together that evening.

We put the diver up in a local hospedaje (hostel) leaving him with enough money for the night.

Bob and Mark ended up meeting with Dr. Fitzpatrick after I had gone to bed.