Honduras: Surprises

This is the first time I’ve ever written a blog update via oil-lamp light. In fact, I don’t know if I ever even used an oil-lamp before, but out here, when the generator is off that’s all we’ve got.

E-Ticket Forum arrived around 8 pm at the fantastically beautiful Royal Playa Roatan. The journey was not so simple, though.

We started in LAX and made our way to El Salvador. From there it was 40 minutes by jet to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. And from there … lots of waiting … and finally getting on an earlier flight. I’ve slept maybe 3 or 4 hours since Wednesday.

The flight was small … maybe 30 people on a 2-prop plane (a Fairchild F-27, if you’re curious. I wonder how old this plane was? It looked vintage 1960’s). Our first glimpse of the island gave us a hint of the incredible diving I expect tomorrow, but also of how small this island is.

We successfully re-met with Stacie at the airport, and headed straight for ziplining. This was supposedly the largest zipline area in the Americas – which seems unlikely – but nevertheless it was a ton of fun. Jumping off a cliff and flying, hung only by a cable, hundreds of yards at a time way over the jungle… beauty and adrenaline, all at once. It was great… lots of hot-dogging and fun.

We also met Pancho. Pancho was an adorable (and very friendly – domesticated I think) spider monkey. He immediately climbed right on top of my head, and when people went to leave he hugged their legs as if to stop them from going.

From ziplining it was another 20-30 minute drive up to the “docks.” We ate at a restaurant bar (I use the term lightly) out over the water. The bathroom was literally a raised platform, with a large trough leading straight out to the water below. But the food and local rum were great, and the character of a man that runs the place was straight out of a book … no one could’ve written a better character.

Matt, the owner of our Resort, told us to put anything we didn’t want to get wet onto the first boat, which left immediately. After our late late lunch (yes, it was past sunset by the time we finished), we jumped on Matt’s other boat and headed to the resort. (It’s not reachable by car, but only be a 30 minute or so boat trip.) However, the wind had come up quite a bit, and the boat ride was more like a trip to Disneyland than your typical “ferry.” Up and down the swells we went, as Stacie and Meschi and I sat in the bow, looking straight down the boat as it went up up up, then not knowing how hard it would slam down, and getting constantly splashed in the process.

We arrived to a pirate’s cove, complete with an island where tons of buried gold was found in the 1950’s, where there are two 1600-era pirate forts that suffered battle damage … where there’s a palapa over the water where we can eat or have our drinks. Arrival was heaven, made all the more so by how much effort it took to get here. (While it was only 20 hours or so, it seemed like days.)

So I’ve just finished a great dinner of fish, and the group is still debating EO topics while I headed back to the room to download photos and get to sleep. I’m beat…

Tomorrow we awake around 6:30 for SCUBA intro lessons. Wish me luck with my ears; they’ve been the problem in the past.