Still in Utila...

March 8, 2011
The past few days have been spent trying to see a doctor about our ear issues. There is an eccentric doctor in town named Dr. John who is an American and is apparently absolutely stark raving mad. He works very minimal hours but when an emergency happens he is there. Supposedly he drinks a lot and does a fair amount of drugs but is the best doctor on the island. He has long hair and a big beard and an ample belly. His wardrobe of choice is a pair of short jean cutoffs and a t-shirt...maybe if your lucky. He sells these ear drops for divers that prevents what we have now. They are called: Dr. John's Eardrops. We went to see him yesterday because Chad's ear is just getting worse and mine were starting to hurt. The clinic was open but no doctor on that day because the night before they had an emergency. Today we figured he had to be open...we waited all moring but he didn't show up again. We met a dentist outside his office who said that he works with him from time to time and this is pretty typical for him to not show up or to show up drunk but that he was the best doctor he ever met. We found a doctor eventually but she only spoke spanish. Our problems were pretty standard so it wasn't difficult. She gave us each some antibiotics pills and drops and some anti-inflammatories. She said no drinking or diving for a week! The whole visit and meds were actually fairly expensive: $2072 Limperas or like $100. We advised our friend David who just arrived in Utila on Monday to invest in some ear drops before he even gets in the water so he could avoid this issue altogether.
Back to Dr. John. So the emergency that had him up all night on Sunday was actually a good ole fashioned wild west shootout. We heard the story today from a friend of one of the shooting victims. There is this crazy German guy who has lived here for some time who runs the BBQ at Evelyn's Restaurant. He has two dogs and they were poisoned for whatever reason. He decided to blame this group of three other expats who live here on Utila, one was a guy named Steve (nationality unknow), a girl from scottland and another girl (name and nationality also unknown). He found them at a bar called Quervo's and told them that "this is war!". They didn't really think anything of it and just shrugged it off and told him they didn't know anything about what happened to his dogs. The next night they were at the same bar having some beers at around 11:30 and he came in through the side entrance to the bar. He had a 38 magnum with him this time. He pointed the gun at Steve's head and pulled the trigger! It grazed the top of his head and left him with a nasty abrasion. The German then pulled his gun on one of the girls in the group. This was a Scottish girl we had actually been served by at a different restaurant the night before. He shot her in the back as she was trying to duck out of the way. While the German was doing that Steve grabbed a cooler that was behind him and used it as a shield, the German shot at him again, hitting the cooler. Amazingly the bullet didn't go through and he was able to hit the shooter with it and elbow him in the face and the gun fell to the ground. At which point he grabbed it and ran outside and screamed for help. The German followed him and spread out his arms and asked Steve to shoot him. Steve decided that was probably not a good idea and there were no more bullets in the gun anyways. Once the police got there he calmly put his arms behind his back and was completely content with being taken to jail. The Scottish girl was hurt pretty badly and that's where Dr. John had to be called. They brought her to the clinic and he stayed with her all night and got the bullet out. She had lost a lot of blood and had to be taken to the hospital in Roatan. Everyone is amazed that no one was killed. This guy was obviously off his rocker and will spend a long time in jail...or the mental hospital. This kind of thing really never happens here so everyone is talking about it. Anyways I guess we could forgive Dr. John for not being able to come to work to fix our ear infections.
Yesterday was actually very eventful, other than the shooting. Nate and Becca had a brand new baby boy, it was my brother's birthday and our friend David came to the island. I am pretty ripped that we couldn't be there to welcome the new baby and enjoy his brand newness, but we will see him soon.
We are still trying to figure out when we are leaving. We keep saying tomorrow but it keeps becoming tomorrow and we keep putting it off. The next leg of our journey will take us through Honduras and into Nicaragua. We don't really plan on seeing anything more in Honduras. It will be about a 3 day journey to Granada but we take the Tika bus which at least has air conditioning. After that its off to Isla de Ometepe and then San Juan del Sur for some surfing. We actually have a bit of a plan for the next couple weeks which is unusual.