Roatan

This is a lot later than I had hoped it would be, but I'm just a kid, easily distracted by coming home and spending time with as many different people as possible in a very short amount of time. So, this is about the last few weeks of our time in Central America, which I never finished.

After a lot of planning, it turned out the cheapest way to get to Roatan would be to rent a car and driver there. Unfortunately, we discovered that Hondurans don't really believe in maps, and so we had no real way of knowing how long it would take. When we asked people, they all said 6-12 hours, which obviously really narrowed it down for us. We decided to leave early and plan on taking two days to drive, just in case, and spending the night in Guatemalan city, Copan, famous for it's Mayan ruins. This was a better plan that we origianally knew, because the drive from Antigua to Copan turned out to be 6 hours, and we were all grateful to spend the night there, and take a break from the car.

The next morning, we found people who could actually help us a little bit, though nobody had an actual map of Honduras. It turned out that Copan to the coastal city La Ceiba, where we would catch the ferry to Roatan was another six hours of driving. We caught the afternoon ferry as planned, and arrived in Roatan about 7 o'clock in complete darkness, so we had no idea what the island looked like. We chose a random taxi driver out of the mob, and were very pleased with out choice afterwards, because he was a very nice, helpful man.

He showed us a good place to eat, even staying for dinner to eat with us, and tell us more about fun activities we could do while we're on the island. Eventually we figured out that he was probably really lonely, because his wife and two daugthers lived on the mainland, and he didn't get to see them very often. The island is a lot safer place to be a taxi driver, because the police aren't corrupt, and it's not as likely that you'll be killed for not giving a gang the money they ask for. Though he didn't really speak English, and our Spanish is far from perfect, we became friends with him, and still stay in touch.

The first morning we were there, Larissa and I woke up to look out the window. The condo Ben has a share in, was right on the ocean, with an essentially private beach. The condo was gorgeous too of course, but what really made us catch our breath was the walls of coral, palm treets and yellow sand lining the striking blue of the ocean. It was like heaven! We explored the condo, discovering a small swimming pool on the roof with an even better view of the island. Because there was a hill separating us from most of the rest of the island and resort hotels, it was a quite point right by the lighthouse.

After a breakfast, during which we had to walk up and down a large hill twice to get access to any food at all, Larissa and I took advantage of the sun and the quiet beach. Unfortunately coral came almost right up to the shore, so there was not a lot of room to actually swim in the ocean, but it still felt really nice. We had an audience of the workers working on other parts of the establishment while we were on the beach. Not preferable, but bearable.

Unfortunately the rest of the time we were in Roatan it rain harder than I have ever seen before, and we didn't see the sun for the rest of the week. We kept cancelling the plans in hopes that there would be sun the next day. It was disappointing to not be able to do the activities we had planned, because we were going to do a tour of the canopy on zip lines, and then go snubaing and snorkeling.

Many of the days, we simply received a classical movie education from Ben's friend Jim, who insisted we see Casa Blanca and Gone with the Wind. Finally one day though, we decided that we really needed to get out of the house. So we took a tour of the island with Cesar, which in itself was interesting, because his poor cab was falling apart. We were going to a restaurant that had been recommeneded called Hole in the Wall. We literally drove all the way across the island just to have lunch (it was a good way to waste time, I'll give you that).

Some of the roads were closed, so we had to go the long way around to get to the restaurant. First we had to take a water taxi, that really freaked both me and Larissa out because it was really tipsy and tiny (and slow, which to me was the most frustrating thing). When we finally got to the restaurant, it literally was a Hole in the Wall. They had some animals that were in the back of the place, literally stand ing in mud with no room to move around because the pens were so crowded. We'd come for the experience, and the food was supposed to be really good...it wasn't bad, but I'm not sure it was worth the whole experience, honestly.

When the week was up, we drove back in two days again. Very uneventful. Everybody was very ready to be back to the US and have some more privacy and space away from everyone else.