Roatán

We spent one last night in San Marcos before taking off to Roatán, my family was so thankful for the hospitality that they received from my host family that we decided to take them out to dinner. This was funny, 12 of us out to dinner, but it was fun and I was glad that we could treat them this way. Monday morning we were off to the airport, from which we would take off for Roatán, fortunately everything went smoothly…más o menos. We almost got left behind due to some gate changes and lack of clear communication, fortunately the plane only had about 15 people including the four of us so they came and found us before taking off. It was a quick ½ hour flight to the island of Roatán, a very beautiful entry to a landing strip that is just off the water, on the way in you could look down on all the reefs that surround the island. Roatán is said to have the best reefs for diving outside of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We got to our rental house, it was bigger than I expected and right on the beach. It seemed like it was going to be perfect…within about ½ hour however, things started to look not so great. Bryn immediately decided to go for a swim off of our dock, she came back in in about 20 minutes and had started to break out in a rash and hives from an allergic reaction to the sea grass, this is pretty normal for her though. Then Phil went out to do some laundry, within a couple of minutes we heard barking and yelling, Phil came back up to the house with two dog bites from a Rottweiler, one on each leg, great start… After that however things started going better. Although we didn’t end up doing a whole lot there we did have a really good time, I guess that’s what vacation is all about, relaxing. We did go snorkeling twice, we weren’t there long enough to get scuba certified, although my sister already was. We went out with a boat from West End, just a little bit off the shore you could get to the reefs. The water there is the clearest I have ever seen in my life, you could easily see 30 meters without problems. The area we were going was also a natural reserve so there was an abundance of different types of colorful fish. Going into the trip I had a little bit of a cold, which isn’t good for diving come to find out. I wanted to get closer to the fish so naturally I would dive down, my ears, head, and sinuses hated me for that, I thought my head was going to explode any time I went more than 6 feet under, but naturally that didn’t stop me from going 20 feet down…oops. Just an angry side note, the Peace Corps issued sunscreen, although it says is waterproof and SPF 45…doesn’t work, my back and shoulders are now peeling horribly. We returned to the mainland on Thursday, unfortunately we weren’t able to go to the Sounders game against Maratón that was playing in San Pedro Sula, that would have been sweet. All in all it was a great vacation, way too much food, but really relaxing and great to spent time with the family.