Hi everyone, hope you’re all doing well! Today we made our last snorkel trip for this vacation, it was a night snorkel with no incidents.

We have gotten a lot of time in the water for this trip even though it’s a shorter trip than normal. I was able to get in six good dives. The book says I’m up to 22 which doesn’t seem like enough. I will have to work on bumping those numbers up!

Roatan has been a great spot for us. There are a few other things that could be done here but a lot of the tourist stuff is pretty unethical and we don’t want to contribute to that. There is a private park here that does a tour but it’s probably in the same business as the other “sanctuaries” here. Excellent place for snorkeling and scuba though. Plenty of dive sites to choose from and dive shops to go out with. There is a good variety of restaurants and bars if that’s your thing. Not many souvenir shops and the grocery stores are small and light on options. Some areas are cleaner and taken care of and some not so much. There are two dive equipment shops here which are the first we have seen on vacation. Mares and Cressi, we use Cressi snorkeling equipment. I do have a couple new items that are not Cressi, my new mask is Ataclete Hombre, it’s a nice mask. I didn’t have any trouble with it and found it to be comfortable and it required less clearing of water leakage. It does want to suck onto my face and needed adjusting the deeper I went. My new Shredder SAR U.S. Diver fins did fit in my suitcase but they have a large foot pocket that accepts dive boots and shoes. It takes up some space. I used the a few times and they work fairly well. I think with some more time with them they will be okay for snorkeling. They are too short for scuba maybe. The longer, thinner ones are more comfortable and can borrow those from the dive shop when diving.

The Splash Inn Dive Shop uses Mares equipment and is seemed like good stuff.

I don’t think we tried anything else out unless you count urgent care. I am interested to see if my health insurance covers it when they get the bill submitted. I don’t know how all that works but I will find out.

Our night snorkeling trip tonight was okay, not a lot of creatures out, maybe it needs to be later. We got in the water probably close to 6:15 as the sun was going down. By the time we were out it was pretty dark. it’s hard to get good night pictures but here are some.

I found out late this evening that there is a free diving school right down the street from our apartment. I’m super disappointed that I didn’t know this sooner. I would love to take a free diving class. Apparently, you can get certified in free diving. If we come back to Roatan, I’ll definitely add that to the things I want to do. I don’t have aspirations to do competitive free diving but I think I could learn to be a better snorkeler and stay under longer if I took some classes. Our snorkel guide tonight was a really good free diver. He has done free diving competitively and his record is 65 meters, which is about 213 feet. That’s impressive! At 30 meters, the pressure of the water starts to push you down and you have to swim against it when you come up. People regularly die free diving. There is a blue hole off the coast of Egypt and more people have died there than on Mt. Everest.

This was our last full day in Roatan. We leave tomorrow around 3pm provided the weather is okay, but we will head to the airport around 12:30. We didn’t have a packed day today. I’m reading a book called Salt, Fat, Sugar: How the Food Industry Addicted Us. It really makes you think differently about food and how the food industry manipulates people. Some years ago, Kool-Aid produced a product called Kool-Aid Kool Burst. They added 1 tbs of fruit juice to each container, then marketed it as a healthy fruit juice product for kids. I read that for a while this morning, then Bill and I went for a walk to look for a Honduras coffee cup. This is not a great place to buy tourist items, which is probably just as well since there are plenty of other ways to spend money. I found a cup. It’s not spectacular, but it can join my other international coffee cups.

We swam in the pool this afternoon, then had a quick supper at a restaurant that had coconut cream pie and key lime pie. We got a piece of each to bring back to the apartment for after our night snorkel trip. They were really good.

The night snorkel trip went well this time. The water was a little murky, but we saw a huge crab, a little Spanish crab that I had never seen or heard of before, and three little squid. The squid were the highlight of the trip. They are super cute! They also seemed interested in our lights and didn’t swim away. It wasn’t the greatest night snorkel I’ve done, but it wasn’t a bad way to end the trip. Bill should have some pictures and our snorkel guide also took pictures and video that he’s going to send us.

I guess that’s all I’ve got. We should be home tomorrow provided that the weather isn’t too bad.

Hello All: Above is the only picture I have. Last night we ate at a place with vegan food. They had falafels, which I love, but the best thing about this restaurant was the mural on the wall. I’m pretty sure it was spray painted. It’s definitely not something I would put on my wall, but it’s technically impressive for a spray painted mural with a lot of detail and shading. My falafel was terrible. It’s not that easy to mess up falafels and French fries, but if you burn them and add flavorless tahini sauce, or no tahini sauce, that will do it.

We just finished two snorkel days. Yesterday, I was wiped out tired and didn’t have energy to do a post. Today, I came back to the hotel and took a nap so I’m more energetic tonight.

The snorkeling here has been awesome! It’s great that I get to go with the divers because the focus is on them. I get dropped in the water to do whatever I want with no guide while the divers are down. That’s how I like things! Fortunately, I brought a bright yellow shirt to swim in. Since I was visible in the water for boats, I didn’t have to take a life vest. I got a little bit lost in the water this afternoon and swam to the wrong boat, but both boats belong to Splash Dive so it wasn’t a big deal. They all look the same and I didn’t remember the name of the boat we were on.

We’ve seen several turtles, some adorable little squid, and a bunch of rays. The variety of fish and coral here is impressive and the water, for the most part, is super clear. We’ve scheduled a night snorkel for tomorrow night with one of the boat drivers. I think it will be better than our previous experience. This guy seems to know what he’s doing. I hope we can see some squid because they should be flashing at night. I’ve been surprised at how curious a lot of the fish are here. The eagle rays will swim with you and so will some of the fish.

After super tonight, Bill went back to the room, but since I’d had a nap, I went for a walk. I found a fruit shop with some more mangos. The mangos here are fantastic! They also had lychees. I haven’t had lychees since I was in France and I’ve never seen them in the US or other places in Latin America. I found a picture on the internet to post below. They aren’t my favorite fruit but they are unique and interesting. They are really sweet! I also found a gelato shop and got a small cup of chocolate gelato and I found a place to get a coffee cup tomorrow when the shop is open. The coffee cup selection here isn’t great. A lot of them were fairly inappropriate and not things I want to bring home.

I’m currently in the hotel restaurant because the internet in our apartment is spotty. I was able to change our flights so we can come home Wednesday to make sure Bill can get back to work. Flights have been delayed because of the smoke so we decided not to chance it. There is no one to cover his shift. At least we got to do everything we wanted to do here.

There is currently a guy here at the reception who sounds Italian but is speaking angry and furious Spanish. He lives here and tried to call to place an order with the restaurant. The restaurant didn’t get his order and went on a tirade about bad service for the 15 minutes he had to wait for his food. There must be some other stuff going on in his life. There is currently a group of young American men here. I’m pretty confident they are drunk, and still drinking. I hope they are ordering food because they could use some to go with the alcohol. I should have spent more time at the reception/restaurant. It’s quite a show!

I guess that’s all I have. Hopefully we will have a good story about our night snorkel tomorrow that doesn’t end at Urgent Care!

I did my last 3 dives for this trip today, Emily snorkeled through I didn’t see much of her. I stayed deeper today for most of the dives. I had a 45 minute dive the first go and then the last were 59 minutes for both. I tried to hit an hour on the computer but I was having trouble staying below the surface for it to count time. Those last minutes seem like they took longer than the beginning minutes.

There were a lot more divers in the water today. I got to see more turtles and a lot of grouper. My guide showed me little crabs and flamingo tongue snails. Few lobsters and many fish. There are a lot of corals here, tubes, barrels and fan type. Not a huge amount of color really but it is neat to see. Visibility was pretty good for about 20 feet, which makes getting good pictures hard if they don’t let you get close. Some things like barracuda are better if they stay away.

All 3 dives went well, having my own dive master was very nice. I didn’t have to worry about ending anyone’s dive early, I was allowed to use up most of the tanks today. I’m not sure they would do that in a group. We ended most of the dives with a swimming safety stop so after that we just stayed above 19 feet and when I hit the limit I would just surface. The safety stop is usually 3 minutes at 15 feet, the computer I wore would count down the time at 19 feet and above. Not sure if it would have issues above 14 because I never tried it.

Emily is working on rescheduling our flight to come back a day early. I am bummed about this but we didn’t anticipate flight issues due to the fires. We had some good days recently but there still has been some delays getting planes here and they have closed the airport a few times. It seems harder than it should be to get accurate information about an international airport. I also have trouble finding out about the fires themselves.

The internet is messed up today and she is having trouble getting things switched. Hopefully we can get it fixed. It might be interesting trying to get the pictures on this post.

Today was my first dive day, Emily was allowed to snorkel in the same general area. I requested my own dive master so we ended up having our own boat for the first two dives. My dives were respectable at 40, 49 and 48 minutes of down time. I am getting better in respect to time and buoyancy. The more I struggle with buoyancy the less time I can get. Not worrying about shortening anyone else’s time was nice. I do know on one of the other boats someone only got 30 minutes, she was a newer diver from what I understood.

I was able to get my camera working again with the old SD card. No malfunctions today. Water clarity was okay but some areas it was diminished and I wasn’t able to get some pictures of the squid and giant puffer fish. The squid were small but the puffer was the biggest I’d seen. I did swim through the reef in one spot, it wasn’t very far maybe 8 feet.

After our trips were done we relaxed in the pool for a while before getting cleaned up for dinner. We ate a what we’re assuming is a newly opened restaurant, I’m guessing if things don’t improve it won’t stay open long.

We really haven’t done much else today so I will add in pictures for you to enjoy.

Also my foot is better, maybe one little dot but the rest are gone.

Hi folks! A little update on my foot, the majority if spines have dissolved, there is a couple spots yet but we have vinegar and a something to put it in so I can soak. They don’t seem to be causing any issues. I will clean it regularly and do the soaks while I’m here. I also put antibiotic ointment on it. I don’t think I need to take the oral med just yet. If I see any signs of infection I will.

More sad news, the SD card in my GoPro is having some issues so our snorkel trip today has no pictures. We did see a lot of fish though. We went to the West Bay and snorkeled for a bit. The water was really nice. There was a current of cold water and one of warm water as we were right at the south end of the island. Some places it was cold and you could see the water shimmer where they mixed. It probably was a little short but I did try out the new fins in the ocean. I didn’t seem to notice any issues with the width of the blades, in the pool I did hit them together some. They do make it easier to keep up with Emily since I don’t use my arms normally because of the GoPro. It’s a big difference in speed if I have fins and use my arms. These are a bit stiff. I feel it in my ankles and calves. I will use dive shop fins tomorrow, they will be longer and more flexible. The longer ones will give even better propulsion in the water. I would have gotten longer ones but for traveling the way we do I need them to fit in my suitcase. They are much better quality than the last ones I tried.

So here’s pictures of the pool here we get to use. It is probably the best one so far. And it’s not cold. These are from yesterday. Emily did go swim for a bit after dinner. I started getting stuff rounded up for tomorrow and started my post.

Before I forget, a little update on my boat project. I will have to sand and repaint it after I get back from vacation. The motor should be running like a top though, I went and picked it up a couple weeks ago after taking it to a mechanic to look at those carbs. As suspected the lower carburetor was not functioning. So the bottom cylinder was not getting gas and the middle only half. He did do a compression test on it and all three cylinders were at the top end of the range. Everything has been set on the motor and all electrical stuff was tested and I already replaced most of it. He was able to find the one part that I had trouble getting a new one last fall. I’m going to test it out after I get home and see how she does.

We used the scooter a bit today, it was nice not needing to walk the hot gravel road to our condo. I don’t mind the main road, it’s more interesting and smoother. Where we are staying is basically at the end of the main drag, everyone seems to us the gravel to do a 3 point turnaround at. We haven’t ventured further down yet but I suspect there’s not much to do there. The main drag is fairly long and it’s mostly restaurants, bars or restaurant and bar establishments. There are also dive shops, they become more densely located on the northern end of the road. There are a few small grocery stores and I’ve seen a few souvenir shops. We are surprised there are not more of those. They also have the people who walk around with shirts, bracelets, carved rock items, fruit and offering massages and hair braids. There are not many currently but I suspect there are more during high season. I have only seem a few tour operators.

The

With it being low season some of the bars do not have many patrons, last night was interesting to see all the places still open for just a couple people and the music going like it was a full house.

Overall we had a good day. We got our laundry done and back, had good food at lunch and dinner, snorkeled and had some time just to relax. With the late night last night it’s going to be early tonight. I have dives scheduled for tomorrow. I did change the SD card in my GoPro and it seems to be working. It is the old card but it says it has two hours left on it. Hopefully I will get some good pictures.

So, we had an eventful day yesterday that ended with an evening at the local Urgent Care where Bill got sea urchin spines dissolved out of his foot. He’ll write about this more fully in his post. We went for a night snorkel, but our snorkel guide didn’t show up so we went out with a very young boat captain who took us to a place where the water was too shallow for snorkeling. At night, this is particularly problematic because you can’t see very far ahead to know whether you are in an area where the coral is too close to the surface. Bill smacked his foot on a sea urchin because there was so little room to maneuver around them.

We made it back to shore and I went to our hotel to get passports, credit cards, allergy medicine and money while Bill waited for the snorkel place to send a car and take him to the urgent care down the road. On the way there, I overheard parts of the conversation between our driver and the owner of the snorkel place. I think the person who was supposed to be our guide had been smoking weed and failed to show up. The owner said something about weed being a pathway to the devil that Christians should not engage with. We were at Urgent Care until about 11pm. Bill soaked his foot in hot water with industrial-strength vinegar to dissolve the spines that couldn’t be pulled out. At least now, we know how to treat sea urchin spines. Last night, we didn’t know if they were venomous or caused allergic reactions. They don’t, which is good. We are planning to put together a small medical kit to take with us in the future for events like this. We have a lot of stuff already, but I think a dedicated bag that could come with us on the boat would be a good idea.

Bill had to go back to Urgent Care this morning for a tetanus shot and we got a prescription filled for antibiotics but he doesn’t think he will need them. I had a short conversation with one of the paramedics while Bill was talking to the doctor. The medic sees a lot of heat exhaustion, dehydration, divers with compression problems from coming to the surface too quickly and other people who get hurt in various ways on the reef. It was definitely a unique experience. We got a free scooter rental from the snorkel place, and we may get one for the rest of the week. It’s nice to have some faster mobility.

Otherwise, we did a tour of part of the island yesterday. There wasn’t a lot to see and we were in some really poor areas, but we did go to West Bay. I definitely don’t want to stay there, it’s all big resorts with lots of people. But, there is a potentially good snorkel location that we can get to with a water taxi. I think we are going to try that this afternoon. Our driver also stopped at a couple of fruit shops so I have some fantastic mangos and a pineapple that’s also probably very good. There was another group of Americans who went to a private zoo where people are allowed to hold the animals which seem to be mostly monkeys and sloths. That’s crazy unethical and bad for the animals. I would love to hold a sloth, but I’m not willing to pay to fund the illegal traffic in animals for these kinds of places.

This is our apartment. It’s really lovely and very comfortable. We’ve been fixing breakfast and should probably do the same thing with lunch.

The food here has been really good! Yesterday, I had shrimp in a garlic sauce with rice and beans, a salad, some sort of pickled purple vegetable, and plantain chips. For supper, I had fried shrimp with French fries. They also make really good lemonade here.

As part of our city tour, we went to a rum distillery. It was on top of a hill so there was a beautiful view of West Bay. Apparently, when the weather is clear, you can see the mainland of Honduras. Bill bought a coconut rum cake that is surprisingly good. It doesn’t have a strong alcohol taste at all. He said the rum samples weren’t harsh either, so not too bad.

It is super hot and humid here! It’s still hazy but it’s been much sunnier for the last two days. I burn fast so I’m glad it was hazy for our long snorkel trip the first day.

I got this very pretty lemonade for lunch with colorful sugar over the top. It was delicious. There is also a French bar and grill that has a bakery where I got chocolate pie a couple of day ago. It is owned by a French couple.

Howdy friends and family! I did not post last night per my normal due to an evening visit to the local Urgent Care/Emergency Room. I seem to find various new experiences while Traveling with Emily. While night snorkeling my foot managed to come in contact with a sea urchin. It wasn’t too bad as there are just some tips that entered my foot and mostly my big toe. They don’t seem to be too deep or particularly bothersome so the contact was light. They spent a few hours soaking my foot in hot saline they had heated in a microwave and added vinegar to. The spines are mostly calcium so the acid in the vinegar will dissolve them. I do seem to have less than I received but I will have to continue to soak my foot until they’re gone.

The tour company owner had to come get us and take us to urgent care. While waiting our guide rounded up another guy who brought some leaves and a fruit that didn’t smell great, he broke the fruit in half and massaged it on my foot then wrapped it in leaves. I don’t know if it helps or hurts but the practitioner didn’t say much about it. They cleaned me up with antiseptic.

We have gotten a deal on a scooter for the day and I believe they are going to give us a snorkeling trip.

Nelson, not Nathan, took us on a tour around the area yesterday with two other couples. It wasn’t the best tour. The rum factory tour was more like a rum selling outlet store , I don’t know that they made anything there. It did have a nice view.

Nelson was supposed to take us snorkeling last night and again he wasn’t there and they guide we got was supposed to have a partner who may or may not have been off smoking weed with his friends based on the conversation Emily heard parts of. Our guide had said while waiting for the big boss that he was told where we went was too shallow.

So for the dumb choice on my part is I opted out of taking my new flippers on the trip. I wasn’t expecting to need to swim fast but they do offer foot protection. I think I will take them from now on. I will have to review them later. So far I haven’t had much experience with them except in the pool.

We probably got a half hour or so in the water before my incident and I had gotten some pictures. Unlike other places the night life in the water wasn’t much different from the day. I did notice the colors were brighter, the blues, greens and purples. A handful of fish, a lobster, several ot the tentacle type starfish and a lot of sea urchins.

That’s it for now!

Hello everyone! Yesterday’s post was quick and seems I left out greetings! Hopefully all of our readers are doing well and are ready for another round of posts by Emily and myself. We picked Roatan because of its promise of clear blue water and it’s shoreline’s proximity to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. According to the research we did do there are places where good snorkeling is right off the beach. We are staying at the Splash Inn located in the West End. West End Bay has beach access to the reef on one end. We have several restaurants and tourist shops within walking distance. There are taxis and water taxis to get us around and they rent scooters and motorcycles just down the street.

The Splash Inn is probably not what I would call an inn, more like a bunch of condos or apartment buildings that are not in one location, we are a 5 minute walk from the front desk, restaurant and dive shop that is actually in a different building. The owner said he had a property management company, I think he still does. Our condo/apartment is nice, clean and maintained. The main door is a bit sketchy but the security guard sits right across from our door. We are in a gated community but they leave the gate up and the guard shack / sauna is empty. I’m guessing that shack is a sauna during the day and is the reason the guard sits under the tree access the way.

This morning we got the sales pitch for our first snorkeling trip. Nathan made us a deal and was going to guide us but we ended up with a third wheel German fella and a different guide plus a boat captain. Sounds like Nathan got called back after we had departed to be the huckster on the street pulling in business. We had a good time but I think Nathan would have been better.

We went to 5 different sites. The shipwreck site has a questionable backstory. It is an old steamboat of some sort, It probably is not as we were told an American vessel possibly from an early war but definitely not 500 years old. We had a lot of time in the water and Emily and I were watered out by the time we got done. We had thought about doing some exploring but the water was calm and we are on a shorter trip this go so we jumped right in. Tomorrow we will do some exploring and then a night snorkel.

We did find a few things today, a little grocery around the corner, a French bakery and a chocolate shop. Possibly Sylvester Stallone’s mansion in Roatan.

There are a lot of dive shops here!

I’m wearing out fast so I’m going to add some pictures to this post and call it finished. I hope everyone has been doing well!

Hello All: Bill and I have temporarily moved up in the world. We are currently living in a gated community in a very nice area of Roatan, Honduras. We have a beautiful apartment with two big bathrooms, a living room and a full kitchen. I could move in here permanently and be just fine.

As Bill noted yesterday, we had some trouble getting here. The Hondurans are burning sugar cane fields and it’s creating a lot of smoke. The airport has been periodically closed because it’s too hazy for planes to land. We had to wait for several hours in Dallas before our plane left. Fortunately, Dallas has a decent airport. There are comfortable places to sit, decent food options in all terminals, and it’s the quietest airport I’ve ever been in. While we were waiting, we went to a spa and got chair massages. It was a little weird, but we were both tired and it was an activity for half an hour.

Bill is concerned about not making it home in time to go back to work because there is no one to cover his shift. If airport problems continue, we may try to come home a day early. We were concerned that the air quality would be really bad. It’s hazy and smells faintly of smoke, but it’s not nearly as bad as we had expected.

We spent all day today on a snorkeling trip. We did three or 4 different snorkel sites, which was fun. The water is super clear here, but the hazy conditions limit water visibility some. However, the haze also helped prevent sunburns. If we had been out all day in blazing sunshine, I would have burned regardless of how much sunscreen I used. This way, I stayed out with no problems.

It’s the low season here and we are practically the only tourists in the West End. Apparently, this place is packed during the winter months. The smoke has caused some problems and I’m sure the water clarity would be better in January with a sunny sky, but I’ll take this over huge crowds and higher prices. We can go book any tour we want any time and we don’t have to worry about everything being booked or dealing with crowds of people in shops and restaurants. We were the only people at the restaurant for supper tonight.

We are planning to book a night snorkeling tour for tomorrow evening but take a more restful day. There’s a museum we want to visit and Bill wants to try out some new diving gear in the swimming pool before his dives this weekend. This is mango season, so I want to find some fruit. I had some really good fruit at the restaurant for breakfast this morning, but we would like to fix our own breakfast most mornings.

Overall, I think we are really going to enjoy this vacation and our week will go super fast.