JJ's Travelogue

UPDATE: Back on the mainland, finally found a net cafe with which to upload these photos:

Sitting in a hammock on the front porch of the cute little cabin I rented here by the beach, blogging from the iPhone (the hotel has WiFi!) while waiting for the rain to stop. Actually, the last few days have been really nice. But a cold front moved in (dropping the temperature to a freezing 68 F), bringing rain and choppy seas.

After getting off the comfy but seasick-inducing ferry and sharing a ride into town, I found a nice cheap place run by an American who immediately handed me a snorkel and fins, commanding me to get in the water and take advantage of the glorious day. This is why I came here – because the coral reef comes right up to the white sand beach. Just 30′ from shore are the strange, beautiful plants and marine life indicative of this latitude.

The Bay Islands are the most popular destination on Honduras for tourists. Many package tours and cruise ships come here, and never even go to the main land. The Bay Islands are comprised of three main islands and dozens of lesser keys.
Utila is known as the cheap chill backpackers haven, and the cheapest place in the world to get PADI certified in diving. I was originally going to go to Utila, until Douglas convinced me otherwise.
Roatán is the most developed and largest of the islands at 60km long by 7km wide, and has a dozen or so towns spread along it, along with smaller villages and countless resorts. I am in West End, the most affordable and approachable of the towns. It is so relaxed and laid back here, I can’t imagine how Utila could be any more so. Everyone speaks English, there are a variety of nice places to eat and drink, activities galore, or just long walks on the beach. The sunsets are incredible. There is no stress, no danger, no hucksters or touts. The locals are friendly and chill.
The downside for me is that I’m spending 2-3x my daily budget here. Don’t get me wrong – this is a cheap Carribean destination, and I would love to come back some time with a group of friends and rent a house for $600/month. You can even rent an entire island (complete with house) all to yourself for very little money. That would be neat, although I would want my own boat.. at least a kayak. But in general, food and drink is about half what they cost in the States, and about 2-3x what they are in the rest of Honduras. Which is why I’m not staying that long.
The third major island is called Guanaja, and is almost all traditional local people who live crammed into a small region off one end, while farming the rest.

Wanting to hang out in the evening, I was again stymied by the damn election prohibition! I did end up finding a place that would serve tourists in a plastic cup, as long as you agreed it was “iced tea” if the police came around.
I’m beginning to sound like an alcoholic with all this need for booze. But you know I usually only have one drink anyway.. it’s more about hanging out in a public space instead of alone in my room.

Yesterday I took a nice long walk along the beach to the tip of the island, where I did some snorkeling. It was pretty good, but not great visibility due to the winds picking up. On my way back, I stopped to try my hand at smacking a coconut open to drink it’s water. I was fairly successful, and feeling pretty cool with myself, when a local walked up with two enormous coconuts, proceeded to hack the top of one into a perfect spout, and hands it to me. Gratis. The kindness of strangers…
I realized why coconuts have all that water inside them – do you suppose they carry with them the moisture needed to germinate their seed? Wikipedia says no, the water simply becomes the white flesh after it ripens. They are amazing at reproducing, tho – coconuts have been found as far away as Norway!

I’ve decided not to attempt scuba diving again, for various reasons. You may recall that I did a series of introductory dives in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef last year. They can take you down to 30′ of depth without being certified. Which was plenty for me.
First, I’ve always had a fear of deep water (and the whole scuba thing anyway is pretty freaky, it just goes against our primal instincts to breathe underwater), so it took a while to calm myself down. Secondly, I had a lot of difficulty equalizing the pressure in my ears. It was really painful, and took about a week to get back to normal. They say 90% of diving is psychological. I probably could have done it, and would still like to at some point, but am just not feeling up to that particular challenge now.

Now the rains have come, which is good in a way, because I’m prevented from finding other adventures to do. Forced to study and write and read.
During a lull in the rain yesterday, I sat out on the end of a dock and meditated, a first for me. It was really peaceful and refreshing.

One of the activities I considered (until I found out the price) is going 1000′-2000′ under the sea, in a submersible craft owned by a research institute (really just one dude) here. Apparently this is one of the few places in the world one can go that deep, owing to the immediate proximity of the Cayman Trench, some 25,000 ft deep (for comparison, the Grand Canyon is 6,000 ft deep)!

Today I hired a bike and went for a killer ride.. 40 miles, all told. Covered about half the island. I didn’t mean for it to be a mountain biking adventure, but such is the condition of the secondary roads here!

I ran into Craig and Jess, a British couple I met my last week at Spanish school. They´re here for five weeks! I love running into people on the road. Turns out Craig is an accomplished diver, he was regaling us with stories of their wreck dives. Sounds amazing (and terrifying).