Roatan island

April 21, 2014

Roatan island

A week ago I took a panga from Little Corn Island to Big Corn Island, where I had to take my flight back to Managua.

The Swiss girl I was travel with, had to leave some days earlier , so now I'm travelling only with the Sweden girl. When we arrived at the capital, we went directly to one of the main bus company to book the first bus to Honduras. They didn't have any available seats till Wednesday (5 days). So we went to another bus company, but they were also completely full till Monday (3 days). The only idea to spend more than one day in that city made us feel really bad (in particular after spending 10 days in a little and quiet Caribbean island). We searched over the Internet any possible way to get out from the city as soon as possible, but we didn't find anything reasonable. So we went to another bus company, but we were very pessimistic. Surprisingly, they told us they had a bus within 3 hours to Tegucigalpa (for who doesn't know, this is the name of Honduras' capital city ). We didn't really want to go there, but then we found a flight from Tegucigalpa to Roatan island for the next morning. So everything seemed perfect. We happily left the Nicaragua's capital and after 8 hours we arrived to Tegucigalpa at 10 pm. Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous country in Latin America , so we decided to make things easier : we took an official taxi to the airport thinking to spend there the night (our flight was at 7 am), in this way we didn't have to take a taxi in the middle of the night . But when we got to the airport, it was closed. What the hell? Since when does an airport (and in particular an airport in a capital city) close at night? The taxi driver offered us (for few dollars more) to take us to an hostel and to come back early in the morning to pick us up. The city was completely desert and it looked like a spectral city, one of those places where you don't want to be, not during the day, not during the night. Not only this, but also all the hostels were closed (it was the semana santa, holy week) . Suddenly I saw a Canadian girl I met on the bus with her taxi driver : they were looking for an hostel too without results. So we decided to look for a place all together: me, the Sweden girl, the Canadian and her cousin. We finally found a hostel with two double room for a reasonable price, but at that point we had to discuss with the taxi driver that suddenly asked us more money than what we agreed. I was the only one speaking Spanish, so I tried to talk with him, but nothing. At the end we decided to pay: we were 4 gringo girls, in a dangerous city, where apparently there was no one else, in the middle of the night : you prefer to pay rather than discuss with someone. The funny thing is that after we paid, he even asked me what time he had to come to pick us up the morning after!

The guy at the reception was very nice and finally we felt safe. When we asked him to call a taxi for the next morning, he told us that probably no taxi driver would worked because it was Holy Friday (holy Friday is holiest than every other day of the holy week) . We had few minutes of panic, but fortunately he managed to find a taxi for us and we finally went to our rooms to take a 4 hours nap. Also the Canadian girls didn't want to spend one more day in that city, so they woke up at 4 am to come to the airport with us, where they found a flight for Utila island, one of the 3 Bay's islands.

Our flight had a stop over in San Pedro Sula. The first flight was empty: 6 people in a airplane for 48 passengers. When we landed, we had to get off the plane and go to our gate. With our surprise, 30 minutes later we left with the same airplane and we really didn't understand why they asked us to leave. After a short flight, we arrived to Roatan. Already from the plane, you can feel you arrived in paradise. Less pleasant was the group of taxi driver that run after us to give us a ride (for an exorbitant price) to get to West End, our final destination. After the bad experience of the night before, we didn't want to take any taxi (not even when the taxi driver offered us the same ride for a quarter of the initial price). We got lucky and a nice local man give us a ride to the bus stop and gave some useful tips.

We easily find a nice (wonderful is more appropriate) hostel near the beach, a complex of many wooden cabanas in the middle of a beautiful tropical garden. Our neighbour has some talking parrots, in the morning they love to sing "happy birthday" or to wish you a Marry Christmas, but most of the time they shout "Mama" with a very desperate voice. First time I heard them, I really thought some children got lost...

Most of the tourists come to this island to dive. Just around the island there are hundreds of beautiful diving sites. We came here with the intention to make some dives and to improve our skills after our Open Water certification. We booked immediately couple of dives for the day after.

We arrived at the diving center early in the morning, we met our guide that gave us some information about the places we were going to visit, we checked all our equipment and we got on the boat to get to our first destination. Already from the boat I could see what that Roatan is the right place to dive: crystalline water and very long barrier reef. Visibility was about 50 metres and the reef was still very well preserved. In a hour we saw so many different corals and fishes, it was absolutely outstanding . The dive itself was quite different from the previous ones, the reef itself was different, bigger, colorful, complex with its numerous canyon/caves/drop off.

The drop off : the first time I got there, I felt inside a mixture of emotions : I was amazed /scared/surprised /curious all at the same time. Being at the drop off remind me about Nemo when he saw it for the first time on his first day at school. I felt pretty the same, but in this case, I was the "bad diver". Sometimes when I see some fishes hiding themselves in the reef, I'm afraid that they are really scared of us ( but probably I'm just exaggerating). As soon as we ascended to the surface, me and my friends didn't know how to express all our excitement. Till when you are in the water you can't really talk, but as soon as we got up, we started laughing, talking about everything we saw, about our emotions. Our happiness was at the stars! During this dive we both understand we LOVE diving!

This for sure will enter in my personal list of the most beautiful places visited in this trip.

During our staying in Roatan, we booked a package of 10 dives, including two Adventure dive: night dive and deep dive. Every dive was a complete different experience and every time we saw so many different fishes (angel fishes , drumfishes , snappers, groupers, fairy baslets, sharksuckers, barracudas, parrot fishes, stingrays, eaglerays etc), turtles, Moray eels, corals, drop off, canyons.

You can't get bored of diving!

I must admit I was quite afraid of the night dive, descending into the water into the darkness, only with a torch. But it was much more pleasant than what it seems . First of all, we went out with a boat when the sun was still up. When we reached the diving site, we hung out on the boat looking at the sunset and only when it became darker we descended. I was surprised to discover that the visibility was quite good, but the experience was completely different than a day dive. What makes this dive an amazing experience (beside diving in different conditions and seeing different fishes) was the phenomenon of bioluminescence. We reached the bottom, we sat down on the sand and we covered our torches. Suddenly everything looked completely black. We could barely see each other, even if we were very close. The only thing that allowed us to feel the presence of other people was the noise produced by air bubbles. We waited couple of minutes, till our eyes got used to the darkness, then our guide moved his hands and from them hundreds of tiny sparkles were shooting. This is a phenomenon caused by dinoflagellates, single celled organisms. We started an underwater dance and all our movements created this unique magic.

Then suddenly we saw a different phenomenon, called "strings of pearls": hundreds of lights arranged in vertical lines, all around you. Someone compared it to the 3D version of the Matrix initial scene. These are visible in the Caribbean Sea only few days a month, after the full moon and last about 45 minutes before disappearing. We were lucky enough to see what many experienced divers never saw.

This phenomenon is caused by Ostracods . " When mating, the males leave the sea bottom and ascend to send out coded messages to females of their species. They secrete a substance from one set of tiny nozzles on their upper lips, and enzymes from two others. These mix in the water to produce a sustained, discrete pulse of bright blue light. They repeat this as they swim to produce a species-specific, coded display."

It was absolutely surreal, like in a dream.

For our first Deep dive they took us to visit the relict El Aguila, a 100m ship sunk in 1997 next to the reef.

For the first time since the beginning of my diving experience, we were going to dive in a very crowded site. The first view during the descending was quite unusual for me : thousands of air bubbles coming up from the bottom... Spectacular... Then the reached the relict: no words to describe it! Even if it was sunk only 17 years ago, corals are already quite big and many fishes already found their home there, in particular big groupers and moray eels. Also looking up the 30 metres of water over your head was spectacular.

Every dive offered us different emotions and we managed to see so many things. Unfortunately also this adventure already ended, but I'm already looking forward to my next diving destination.

Yesterday we visited the western part of the island. It seemed to be already in another world: West Bay is much more touristic than West End, full of Luxury hotels and expensive restaurant. But the beach is really beautiful...

I'm leaving the island in few hours, but I feel I could stay here for another month.

Our flight will take us to San Pedro Sula, apparently one of the ugliest city in Honduras. From there we will try to get the first bus to Copan Ruinas, a city near the border with Guatemala, where we are going to visit one of the best Maya ruins.

Roatan reef from above