Roatan Looks Interesting

I've mentioned before that Roatan has been on my list of places to visit for quite a while now and we finally decided that the time was now. So, what did we think about this island which is part of the country of Honduras but yet seems so far removed from it? The island is filled with a good mix of locals and expats and English is spoken most everywhere on the island even though the same is not true for the mainland, as the country's language is Spanish. The island is easy going and if you can avoid the tourist spots during cruise ship times and avoid other gringo scams is it a great friendly place to spend your time. There are 3 main areas that people would consider moving to so I'll address each and our view of it: West Bay - this is where the best beaches and best snorkeling is located but it is also where many cruise ship passengers end up so it makes it a bit touristy and not really our pace. Although we only spent one day in this area we did feel a litt...

Now that Dave has gotten a good nights sleep and his itching is down to a manageable level we can get on with the rest of our vaca. It's Wednesday morning and first we have our vaca breakfast which today is good ol' bacon and eggs with some toast....yummy. I think vaca breakfast tastes the best, probably because I don't have to make it, but I do make the coffee so it's almost a fair trade off. Of course I also get stuck doing the dishes while Dave goes down to the dock and takes a few casts. We've arranged a boat tour with Marvin the local water taxi driver who takes us through the mangroves into a few of the local bights (think bays) and shows us some restaurants, bars and stores.  He has a hand line that he lets trail behind the boat and he gets a few bites, one which is a small barracuda which Dave reels in. Marvin then drops us off in  Oak Ridge, one of the local towns and we walk along the waters edge until we come to a small place on the side of the road...

One of the big drawbacks of Roatan is the biting bug problem. I had read about it and people strongly suggested that visitors bring lots of bug spray with deet in it, and so I did. We typically travel with plenty of bug wipes to use during dusk and dawn hours where mosquitoes can often be at their worse, especially in any tropical environment but the warnings were strong enough to make me actually bring a full can of OFF w/deet. We discovered quickly during our first week on the West End that even if you just want to have coffee out on your deck in the morning, you better put on your deet. The problem here is 2-fold though, there are tiny mosquitoes that will bite any tome of day if you are near trees and such off the water, then there are sand fleas that will gladly attack you while on the beach. So, every time we went out anywhere for anything we covered ourselves in deet and for the most part we were pretty lucky. We only got a couple of flea bites every day and they took a ve...