What a amazing two weeks. We met many awesome people and saw some extraordinary sights.
Its not quite tourist season yet on the island which means two things, rain in the morning or the afternoon or both and meeting many expats.
First about the weather, it is extremely humid, clothes dont dry outside and the temperature never seems to drop from 30 degrees. Good thing the ocean is close.
Chilling on the sailboat.
Sundowners bar on the beach. Owned by a Canadian thus has Canadian satellite and Hockey!
Evenings were often spent at Sundowners. Great place to meet people. Speaking of people we met Tabitha from Oklahoma there. She came down on her holidays to run a vacation bible school. We spent a couple mornings helping her out. We enjoyed playing with the kids.
Goofy group shot
Dinner with Debi and Bob
Debi and Bob run http://www.made-in-roatan.com/. We met Debi and Bob at the grocery store on our second day in Roatan and they invited us for supper. Debi and Bob pastored various churches in Western Canada. It was great to talk to them and to have a sit down dinner. Reminded us of home!One day while heading to the grocery store we decided to keep riding. Roatan is a 17mile by 3 mile island with most of its population on the west end. We found ourselves at the far east end where Martina runs the Lost Moose Bed and Breakfast. You guessed it, she's Canadian. We were welcomed in for a beer and educated on some off the lesser known sights of Roatan. We started making a list... good thing we have two weeks... Thanks for the help Martina!
We met Dive Master Justin at sundowners and dove Mary's place (#8 in the world) and Mr Bud (a wreck dive) Great day and great diving!! And yes, he was also a Canadian.
Mary's Place, a earthquake in 2004 created 3 large cracks. Great to swim down.
Mr. Bud a 75ft ship which sunk a few years back. We explored the cargo hold, engine room and navigation decks.
We also dove a bunch on the northside of the island with Native Sons (our Hotel)
We explored a 200ft cargo ship sunk at 110ft about 10 years ago. It was broken into three parts from past hurricanes.
While waiting for a safety stop we explored a cave.
Photos dont do it justice.
We spent a day diving/snorkelling with reefhouse on the east end. Met a cool group of people that had been there for a while and even had the chance to spear a lion fish!!! Tons of fun. (Lion fish are an evasive species from Asia and are destroying the aquatic life and therefore fine to kill)BJ's! Live music every Friday afternoon and a great time to meet Ex pats that had been living on the island for a while as this definitely was not where your average tourist ends up.
After a great afternoon at BJ's and then dinner at Marble hill farms with the crew we were invited to stay nearby at Paul and Charlene's guest house. Paul and Charlene have been spending winter on Roatan for the last 10 years, they have a great set up. They work in the fishing industry in Alaska. The next morning Paul took us out on his boat and we all went snorkeling off of the reef which was different than any of the other snorkeling we had done so far. There were some waves breaking and a bunch of current and cool caves/swimthroughs 15-45ft down. Definitely starting to get used to being under water. We had some smoked Alaskan salmon for lunch! Unfortunately, neither of us brought a camera with us (or anything else as we weren't planning on spending the night). Great times! One day we will make it up to Alaska!
One of our last days on Roatan was the Grey Cup. We headed across the island by taxi with two friends from the hotel. We met up with some the of the ex patriots (Saskatchewanians, Francis and Karen and their friends) at a sports bar. It was a strange weekend as the Honduran election was going on and there was a complete ban on liquor sales... Fortunately for us it didnt apply to the gringo sports bar. We had a great evening. More pics to come...! Off to the mainland tomorrow!
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