Roatan, the caribbean packed in a small Honduran island

Tuesday, August 1st

In Tela, we woke up really early. We knew that the drive to La Ceiba would take about 2 1/2 hours and we needed to make the 10:00AM ferry that would take us to the paradisical island of Roatan. Of course, the locals were once again wrong and we did the trip in about 1 1/2 hours. Once there, we bought tickets and had plenty of time to have breakfast so we ventured into La Ceiba, the town.

La Ceiba is a smallish town primarily used for tourists as a jumping off point to the islands of Roatan, Utila and others. We drove for a while and went to a restaurant whose guard told us they were not serving breakfast yet even though it was about 8:45AM. It was very interesting to see his gun stuffed the front of his pants like in the wild west movies! However, he did tell us the name of a Pulperia (grocery store in Honduras) that served good breakfast.

The meal was fantastic! For about 34 Lempiras (local currency 18.5:1 with the dollar) we got plantains, beans, a piece of pork, cheese, bread, etc.. Really worth it. After this, we headed to the pier where we dropped off Rosinante. He was going to be there alone for about 4 or 5 days in a parking lot. So we decided to take off the Mass plates to avoid a potential break in. On the way to the boat, we noticed two cars with Louisiana plates dismantled inside. We don´t know if they were stolen cars or they drove there, went to Roatan, and their car was broken into. We left with a bit of aprehension towards leaving the car there but we had no choice. If something bad was going to happen to Rosinante, it would have happened in Belize City.

The boat ride was expensive at about 300 Lemps. It took about 2 hours. The nose of the ship rocked up and down and if you stand in the very front, the view is great and when the ship hits the waves in the right pattern you feel as if you are in a roller coaster! We saw the movie ¨Shall we dance¨ with JLo and Richard Gere. What a tear jerker. I think greg was eye balling when we saw the port of Coxen Hole, Roatan.

People in Roatan speak English, Spanish and Garifuna. Mostly English and Spanish though. We had arranged our SCUBA diving lessons to start at noon and it was about 12:45PM so we took a taxi. The ride took about 15 minutes and at arrival we decided to stay in the hotel next to the dive shop.

The Native Sons diving outlet was great. Our instructor, Melia and the other instructor in the shop, Ryan were awesome! We started with a few hours of videos today itself. Modules 1, 2 and 3. Tomorrow we´ll take a test on each module and finally hit the water. The sea looked so tempting that we went to the beach (talking 20 feet outside of our hotel room door) to swim for a bit after the video watching.

Of course, we went to dinner at this Thai/Vietnamese restaurant. Intuition would have told us not to eat something so foreign to this island here, but we foolishly went for it. We were mostly dissapointed with the meal, the price and of course, the flies! Everywhere! We even fed the flies with their own plate made of a mix of our food to see if they would bite into the trick and leave us alone. No such luck!

After this we went to the drinking outlet in the beach spot in front of the hotel (amazing place called Sundowners). This place has the best Margaritas in town just so you know.. We chilled there for a while and saw the sunset. After the beach fire was done, the bar closed. This town has set up a drinking bar hopping schedule on their own. Sundowners closes at 9:30PM!!!! Then, you go to the Purple Turtle, which closes at midnight, then blah blah.

We did some exploring in the town and I swear that I think we saw Odalis Garcia, a Cuban TV host for a show called Lente Loco in Univision. Not 100% sure but I think it was her. We are so exhausted at this point that we just go to our extremely hot room to sleep. No aircon for us tonight but accomodations and perfectly located and somewhat cheap (relatively). We miss you Todd. There are some talks of a blackout tonight since the local energy provider is going bankrupt, we´ll see what happens. Tomorrow is our first day of actual diving.. YEAH!!!