Isla Roatan, Honduras - Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Oh my goodness... there is so much to say about Roatan. We really liked it. I think our tour guide made us really love it though. You know how some people just make you like them... she was it! Let me start from the beginning.

We woke up early Wednesday morning. We knew we needed to go to the Lido deck to get some breakfast before we headed to the Belize/Costa Maya Shopping Talk and then off to Roatan for our tour mid-morning.

When we arrived at Roatan we docked on a pier. We still needed to make our way to Deck Zero to head off the ship. We were greeted when we stepped off the ship by dancers and drummers in costumes. They were pretty entertaining. We searched for our tour but there was no one with our sign. We were going on a semi-submarine. I thought this would be fun for Jerome since he doesn't swim and wouldn't be going snorkeling. We found someone who told us to hang out by her that she was with the same company but that the semi-sub tour people weren't out to the pier yet. Works for us since we had a pretty good view of the dancers.


Our tour guide finally arrived with her gold tooth self. We followed her like little ducks to the van that was taking us around the island to the semi-sub. We went all threw the West End of Roatan. Apparently there is only one road on that part of the island... so there isn't many bank robberies because the police can "surround" the robber very easily. If they were caught, they get no cable tv, no bed, one toilet and packed in like sardines with many other felons. Wow.

We went on a very curvy road, hills the whole nine. It had rained recently so everything was lush and green in the jungle. We finally got to where the boat was going to be docked. It was out on an earlier tour. The tour guide jumped out of the van to talk to the other "natives" while we stayed in the air conditioned van. Kids came out of no where with beads, bracelets, necklaces, shells.
The boat arrived and we watched the previous tour get off the boat. We walked down the boardwalk to the boat and were the first to board.... we got the very front of the bottom of the boat. Here's a few pics from the semi-submarine. One lady thought it was a bit too choppy for her and headed up to the deck. I have to agree that if we would have came out of the water 10 more times I would have been feeding the fish. We got off the boat and got back onto the van/bus. Since we were the first to get on the boat we were the last to get on the bus... which for us sucked. I'll tell you why... mind you there is only a two way road on that end of the island.... the cars/trucks/buses are smaller...and they pack more people in. So... even for "small" people it was hard for them to "walk" down the isle of the van to the back seats.... We are not "small"... now tell me you skinny people why did you make me crawl over you and the seats making my flab touch you??????? :)

Sorry for the tangent... so we drove again to the next spot... oh another spot? I thought we were just going on the boat tour and heading back to the ship???? Guess we get more for our money! We stopped at this little place on the water-duh it's all on the water! Anyways we stopped to get a free drink... and watch the locals sing and dance again. There were some cute little shops there too where we picked up a few great wood items.


We got to the point where we were waiting for the others to board the bus. We decided to go on the shore and see if we could find any shells and dip our toes in the water. Yup... Jerome actually put his feet in the water!We saw our tour guide walking from the restaurant where we got the "free drink". Here the bus we thought we were getting on that no one was on was not our bus. WE ALMOST GOT LEFT! Here our real bus was full and we got stuck in those dang back seats again. There was one last stop... yep one more. We stopped at a little shop where that make cameos - you know the broach or necklace of the lady carved in white. They gave us a demonstration of how they make them and we got back on the bus to head back to the ship.

We got back on the ship and I headed to the pool again. Jerome headed off the take pictures of the ship leaving and the sunset.
We were so tired after our adventures of the day that we fell asleep and didn't wake up for dinner! We woke up at midnight and asked each other if we were going to midnight show... nope... and kept sleeping till the morning.