The ship docked at Roatan, Honduras, around 7 am. Roatan sits about 40 miles off the Honduran mainland, and hosts many fine beaches and resorts. The island is also home to a few eco-parks where visitors can interact with many exotic animals. We were going to do both.
We got off the ship and met up with our tour guides Will and Darson. We rode through the streets of Coxen Hole to Manawakie Eco Park. We met up with Jimson, who showed us some of the island’s native plants and talked to us about what they were used for. We met the park’s capuchin monkeys, one of which tried to pick Jimson’s pocket. Sneaky little bugger! We also saw some spider monkey and rabbits, but we pretty much skipped them to get to the park’s real attraction, the sloth. Jimson introduced us to our sloth pal, “Real Deal,” the park’s only male sloth.
Sloths are interesting. Most people know them as slow-moving creatures. Jimson said they can actually be pretty fast if startled. Real Deal was calm and much like a baby. All he wanted to do was cuddle and hold onto something.
After saying goodbye to Real Deal we hopped back into our guides’ car and headed to the west side of the island. As we always do with the guides on our trips, we chatted with Will and Darson, to learn more about life on the island. We joked around like old friends.
We soon found ourselves at Paradise Beach Resort for some relaxation and snorkeling. We hopped on a boat that took us out to the Blue Channel. Roatan is surrounded by the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second-largest barrier reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef. The Blue Channel is a popular spot to view various types of fish, sea turtles, rays, and sometimes even sharks.
Dumb me forgot my waterproof camera on the ship, so we gave it a go with trying to get video with Alicia’s phone inside a waterproof pouch. Trust me on this … we saw lots of striped fish, blue fish, and even a sea turtle swimming around. I would love to provide you proof, but there was a mishap.
We set the phone to camera mode prior to sealing it inside the pouch. Unfortunately, we did not change the screen sensitivity at the same time, so we could not control the phone through the pouch, which turned out to be very frustrating. So we decided to open up the pouch while we were about a mile from shore and 100 yards from the boat. We did our best to keep the pouch above water to adjust the settings. Somehow a tiny bit of water got into the pouch, and … well … RIP Alicia’s phone. At least we have the memories … and this drawing!
We got back to the beach to mourn the phone and try to dry it out in the sunshine. We drowned (Ha-ha! Get it?) our sorrows in a couple beers and a margarita, and enjoyed a delicious fish filet for lunch.
Every so often, we were interrupted by roving vendors who roamed the beach. They were selling sunglasses, candy, and (Are you serious?) waterproof phone pouches. I was even offered a pair of sunglasses while I was clearly wearing a pair. Apparently they were only allowed on a certain part of the beach, because no sooner did they wander into the area with all the resort’s lounge chairs the security guards shooed them away.
We returned to the ship and tried our hands again at the casino. Apparently my luck had run out because we could not hit anything on the slots. We even tried some unconventional methods to coax the slots into paying out. I thought maybe because I was wearing my contact lenses the machine didn’t recognize me. So I did what anyone would do, I made glasses out of my fingers! It didn’t work.
