South America
MexicoHonduras
Our first stop in Honduras was the Copan ruins. These turned out to be one of the better sets that I saw during this trip. Our guide showed us around the ruins and showed us the best picture of it - on their one Lempira note (right).
Fun flight
After that visit we made our way to the airport and our flight out to Roatan in the Baye Islands. We flew out in an old twin prop Jetstream aircraft, which, for me, was great fun. As we flew along my face was glued to the window enjoying the view. I noticed, in a reflection in the propeller spinner, that our undercarriage was still down. Looking through the curtains into the small cockpit I saw the pilots repeatedly try to raise them, but to no avail. Well, I thought, as long as they're stuck down rather than up , then I'm happy, and our 15 minute flight continued without any further disturbances.
From the airport it was a short taxi ride to our hotel, on the northern shore of Roatan (16 18 22.26 N, 86 35 33.17 W). The hotel was a two storey wooden building with large windows that had insect screens but no glass. This allowed the cooling breeze to blow through the rooms. The hotel also had a very good restaurant, which overlooked the Caribean and produced great food.
Scuba
Six of us decided to use our time at Roatan to get our first PADI certificate, while others already had them and went diving, and Flash (charming American lady) took training and exams to the next level up. This, for we six, meant that all of our waking hours were spent either diving or learning the theory side to diving. The waters around Roatan (certainly on the northern coast) are wonderfully warm and placid, making them a great place to learn to dive. I won't go into the dives we did, apart from to say they were great, we saw loads of fish, and I'd gladly do it again.
Birthday
While I was at Roatan it was my birthday. I celebrated it with a good meal and some drinks (couldn't get too drunk as we were diving the next morning). The group gave me a lovely home-made birthday card. I still have it.
Roatan was a really nice place, with bars and clubs and restaurants. Possibly my favourite was built on stilts, sticking some 50 meters out over the water into the bay (16 18 09.79 N, 86 35 39.81 W), and was a great place to watch the sunset over the Caribbean.
The only thing I had against Roatan was the sand flies. These little things were voracious and bit through any sort of bug repellant.
All to soon, our PADI diving was over, we all had our certificates, and we were back at the airport. Our flight back was in an antiquated French built Noord aircraft, that had been built back in the 60s with rough airstrips in mind. As we sat there, taxiing around for takeoff, the plane wallowed in every turn and the airconditioning produced water vapour, as it tried to deal with hot and humid air in the cabin. The flight itself turned out to be a pleasant non-event. And then we were back on the mainland of Honduras and back in the truck.
Travelling south we stopped at Lake Yojoa for the night. This was a tranquil place, much cooler then the coast and a good place to spend the night. I slept next to the lake, in a small out house. It had no walls, but did have a roof. Early the next morning, as I stumbled around brushing my teeth, trying to wake up, I watched a local fisherman making his first catches of the day from his rowing boat, while perched in a tree a fish eating bird looked on.
Then it was a quick breakfast, pack up camp and off to the border and out of Honduras.
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