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Friday, 2/18/22:
Last day on the island! The weather is golden: warm, clear and calm. Woke up early after a good night’s sleep (for once). Had a breakfast of leftovers and extra food. Had an awesome bacon-egg-tomato’s-avocado breakfast sandwich. Headed down to the dock at Clearwater to set up a time lapse. Of course the sky is completely cloudless and blue. Maybe it will change. It always does.
We got all packed up, said our goodbyes and headed for West End to rendezvous with the kids to eat lunch. Katie and Matt had to head for he airport by 12:30 so we decided to eat an early lunch. Went back to everybody's favorite- Creole's. One last taste of their amazing chicken and great sides.
After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Matt and Katie and decided to kill time by meandering up the street to look for a new mask for Clay. Along the way we picked up few tourist items and browsed a few other shops, eventually ending up at the Sundowner Beach Bar. It was mid day and we had a few more hours to kill before we had to head for the airport, so we decided to have a cold beverage on their open second story bar. It was a beautiful tropical day and it was warm. But due to an odd shortage of electrical outlets and some switches not working, we couldn't get the ceiling fans to work. No problem. We would be back in the frigid north soon enough so might as well enjoy the heat while we could.
Eventually it was time to leave so we piled in the cars and headed for the airport. We dropped off the cars and entered the terminal only to find out that, what else?, our flight would be delayed for an hour. So Susan, ever resourceful pulled a cart over to our chairs and set up an impromptu card table. We played for awhile, grabbed a bit to eat and finally took off for home. Got home very late to a cold, dark Minnesota winter night. We slept snuggly in our warm beds with dreams of sunshine and diving swimming in our dreams.
Nicci put together a fun video from Instagram using all of her pictures and videos. Here it is:
Thanks to Nicci, Katie and Susan for their great videos and images that went into this blog. Thanks to the Harmons for coming along. You guys make every minute fun. Let's do it again real soon!
Just a few general thoughts on the trip to wrap up:
We have always stayed on the west side of the island (the “busy” side), but always away from the two main commercial enclaves, West Bay and West End. Still the island is nothing like some of the other destinations that we have visited that are much more established and more heavily used, like Cozumel and Belize. It was nice to have less people on the island due to COVID. The reason that so many people stay on that west side is because it is the leeward side of the island, so much calmer and less challenging for boats and diving, and the reefs are so close to shore. I did notice when diving that, while the size and breadth of the coral heads is astonishing, there were large patches of dead and dying coral. That is very concerning. One of the women who worked at the dive shop that we used, Clearwater Adventures https://www.roatanclearwater.com, was a volunteer who took part in the prevention of the coral die-off program by diving and inoculating coral. They are also creating nurseries to grow new coral. These are scaffolding erected underwater with pieces of coral anchored to them. These pieces take “root” on the scaffolding and, once growing, are taken and epoxied into place on the reef. This to me feels like a minuscule effort against a huge menace, but they are trying.
Our diving was spectacular. Short, easy boat rides, amazing clarity, (mostly) bountiful corals and millions of fish. Never had a bad dive. We did get shore bound for two days by rain and wind which was a bummer but got in the water as much as possible.
One of the main charms of the island is that there are no chain restaurants except for BoJangles Chicken. They apparently love this stuff on the island. Otherwise, no McDonald’s, Hardees, 7-11’s, no chain hotels, etc. Thus there are innumerable charming little mom and pop bars and restaurants which all serve unique and very good food usually with a spectacular view of the water and sunsets.
Maybe one of the things that is keeping Roatan from becoming Cozumel, in addition to being significantly further from the U.S., is the terrain. The island is essentially a mountaintop that shoots up from the ocean bottom. The incline from the highest points directly down to the sea is breathtaking. Our road from the main highway down to our place was about a 75% incline with a hairpin turn at the first corner. I had to take this drive at about 2 mph. We almost didn’t make it up the road with four people in our car on a slick road after a storm. The terrain makes it difficult to build houses although they are trying. The houses sit precariously perched a story or two off the ground on posts on some of these ravines.
This island gets abundant and consistent rainfall so there is thick jungle everywhere. It’s incredibly lush and beautiful with wild parrots circling the sky. It truly is a garden of Eden.
One of the concerning things that the island has to come to grips with very soon is that they don’t recycle. With all of the tourists and bars and restaurants that serve them, you can imagine the amount of stuff that accumulates. It’s not a big place. They don’t have a lot of room to throw it all away. After a big storm, there was a lot of plastic debris that washed up on shore. Sad and depressing. Let’s not kill paradise.
