Honduras

So, originally we were supposed to go to Cuba, but then our State Department was slow and there were other problems. Unfortunately, no Cuba, though this would be the only time we could probably ever go there so that’s a bummer. Plan B: Guatemala. They made trips, one of which was going to see the Mayan ruins. I was so excited for that because I’d never expected to actually see Mayan ruins, but how cool would that be? PSYCH The State Department decided that Guatemala was too dangerous with the drug trafficking going on there so we weren’t allowed to go. What did that mean? Honduras! Except, Honduras was also too dangerous so…Roatan! A resort island off the coast of Honduras with restrictions to this island (meaning no travelling from it or you would be in a load of trouble; also this meant that if you lost your passport you were up the creek without a paddle). I must admit, some of us were kind of worried about being on an island for two days as there were quite a few people who do not seem to have self control and now that classes were over it sounded like a recipe for disaster. Anyways, we finished classes and arrived in Roatan. I signed up for one trip because I really wanted to go snorkeling on my voyage. Honduras is supposed to have one of the best coral reefs in the world, right after the Great Barrier Reef and the reefs off the coast of Mauritius. We headed to an ‘underwater museum’ so we could see some Mayan ruins (replicas really) and reefs in one. I think the snorkeling equipment was better than that in Costa Rica because it fit better, though I kept getting water in my mask because the waves would slosh some water down my pipe. We got flippers this time, which I’ve never used before but they really are excellent tools in the water. It’s so much easier to swim with them that I don’t know why I’ve never used them before. It was so cool to swim and be only a foot above the coral (or at least that’s what I’m guestimating) and see it clearly. There were so many different fish and I really don’t have any idea what kind of fish they were but they were brightly colored. The coral had many different colors as well. I really liked snorkeling. After we had seen everything, we came back in and it started to rain. Oh, I forgot to mention the sand fleas. So, Central America has sand fleas and Honduras is notorious for them. Basically, there isn’t any bug spray or anything to prevent them from biting you so we all just had to hope we didn’t contract anything from them. Anyways, after snorkeling, we headed back to the ship.

Once back, I met some friends and we decided we wanted to walk to this other part of the island. As Roatan is basically this long skinny island and we were near the bottom East side, we were trying to walk around the bottom to get to the West side. It didn’t look that long on the map and the locals were telling us it was much too far (which we thought they just didn’t like walking like the locals in Vietnam) but we eventually realized that it was much too far away. We all squeezed into a van and drove over to the other side. Once there, we realized we were smack in the middle of all of the parties from all the other groups. We didn’t really want to be there so we walked along the beach until we finally found a place to eat. (by the way, it was drizzling the entire time). There was only one waiter who you had to find to place your order, but eventually we all got food. Then we went home and watched some movies to finish out the night.