Day 2: La Ceiba/Roatan, Honduras

This morning we caught the first ferry (9:30am) heading out to Roatan Island. The port was jam-packed with people, cars, taxis, suitcases, and a few stray animals.

It was pretty intense trying to fight our way through the miscellaneous mass up to the ticket counter. We scored 2 boletas (tickets) for about $25 each and boarded the nearly full ferry. The ride took about an hour and a half but it felt much longer than that! The sea was pretty rough that day and before we got fully away from the dock, the crew started handing out these striped plastic bags to every passenger. Puzzled, we just took them and held on to them while the on-board entertainment was cued up (new-ish American movie Hancock). Shortly into the ride, several people around us began to look a little sick. Glancing beyond them, we saw even more people getting sick—into those striped plastic bags. Aha! Lin was in pretty bad shape but luckily had not eaten breakfast before the ferry ride so didn’t have the experience of using the sick bags. The seas were so rough that probably about 1/3 of the passengers were throwing up from seasickness. The stink was quite unpleasant and the sounds of our heaving neighbors didn’t make the ride go any faster.

Finally we arrived on Roatan and grabbed an extremely overpriced taxi (about $30US for both of us– ouch!) to take us the 40 minutes or so from the port to the West End where we were planning to stay. As with all taxi rides in Honduras, you come so close to things, people, and other cars that you’re sure that you are going to hear screaming and or scraping metal at any second. We got stuck in a massive downpour as soon as we had hopped out at a bancomat (ATM) to get enough money to pay the cab fare. We, including our driver, ended up sprinting toward the car as fast as we could to try and not get completely soaked. Somehow our driver managed to dodge the rain well enough that he didn’t even look very wet when we all piled back into the car. We, on the other hand, were both absolutely soaked to the bone!

Roatan is a world renowned place for diving with the second largest reef system in the world. As you might imagine it also has plenty of good, cheap dive shops to get PADI certified. We chose Coconut Tree Divers just across from Half Moon Bay. They run a very professional, safe, and fun operation and have great instructors who can even make the academic learning part fun. After checking in at the shop for a course and getting comfortable in their dorms ($5/bed for their students), we headed out to check out our side of the island.

Our View