December 7, 2011 – Day 4 Roatan, Honduras

Today was our first day off the ship for 3 days.  I definitely needed it.  We decided not to do a planned excision at this port.  We weren’t exactly sure what we were going to do, we were just winging it.  It was pouring pretty good when we docked and got off the ship.  The weather in Roatan is kind of like what they say in Kansas, if you don’t like the weather wait a minute because it will change.  However, Roatan is really bad.

We got off the boat while it was pouring rain.  We headed out of the port and got bombarded with tour guides and taxi drivers.  We ran into one that convinced us to go on one of their buses.  We would have a personal driver and tour guide all day and the bus held all 8 of us.  It was only $25/person and it sounded like a great deal.  The morning time was spent shopping and finding all the local shops. Since it wasn’t a scheduled thing they would take us to all the local spots.  The only thing fancy about this town was the little area where we docked, otherwise, you definitely know it is a third world country.

After shopping, we headed for a private resort beach.  Our tour guide Grace, told us they don’t have any free beaches they all are owned by private resorts.  During our sales pitch at the dock, we were promised monkeys.  Grace said they weren’t any monkeys on the beach, but she would find me some.  We wound up at a zip-line company that actually had 3 little monkeys. They were tethered so we were actually able to go up and play with them.  I have a feeling PETA doesn’t have much say in this country.  It was the highlight of my trip so far.  I got to play with the bigger monkey first.  It had a good grip with its hands, feet and tail.  For some reason he liked to bite my elbows.  I probably have Ebola now.  It climbed all over me.  For some reason at one point it wanted to grab on to my nose with one hand and try to stick his other hand in my mouth.  It was so funny.  It climbed all over my head. Then I played with the baby one they had.  He was just as cute, but he liked to pull my pony tail.  At one point, Shara, was playing with the bigger monkey, when the bigger one that had been sleeping decided to jump on her back.  It was kind of funny to watch all the employee’s deploy in all directions.  They told her not to make any sudden moves and to just walk away from him.  I guess he’s a little testy.  Maybe they would retire him.  He didn’t cause us any problems and they employees were able to get him off her back.  It was very hard to leave them.  I could have played with them all day.

Next we went to the private beach.  It was only $10/person to play on the beach.  We got a little hut and some beach chairs.  By this time, the weather had gotten better.  The sun was out and the humidity was up.  They had a live DJ.  We started off the day with a dance off.   It was Ericka, Sara and I along with Melissa and her group.  So, all Wichita people. Somehow, we all ended up at the same place.  Since no guys would volunteer, we had to buddy up with the other girls.  I am pretty sure it came down to me and my partner and Melissa and her partner, but it was a “nobody loses” kind of place so we all got free drinks.

The beach was more of a walled off lagoon, so I decided to swim over to the other side.  It was about 100 yards.  As I was on that side, it started to get cloudy and began to pour down rain.  While I was mid-swim back, it stopped.  Then the wind picked up. Then 20 minutes later it was perfectly calm. Weird.

The resort also had a chlorine pool.  I decided that would be the best time to try out my new water proof, freeze proof, shatter proof camera.  They had a little water slide and I was able to video tape my ride down the rock slide they had at that pool.  The camera worked out pretty well, except when I hit the curve on the slide he hit the light of day and the camera couldn't adjust soon enough so it kind of whited out for a few seconds.  Otherwise, it worked really well.  I took some underwater shots of me and Shara landing in the water from the slide.  We spent about 3 hrs at the resort before we headed back to the ship to reboard. I did buy a few things.  I don’t think I’ll have too much time to shop in Belize tomorrow, but I’m sure we’ll get our fill of shopping in Cozumel.  Maybe I’ll actually buy myself something there.

I decided to call it an early night tonight.  I got all dressed up and went to dinner.  I was not at all impressed with anything I ate tonight.  It can’t be great every night, I guess.  After dinner, we were standing outside the dining room.  Before dinner, the Plummers and I got our photos taken. While we were standing outside by the photographer, he came over and asked if I would take some individual photos.  He said I had pretty hair and wanted to try something out on me.  He was cute so I obliged. He had me face away from him and on the count of three, he wanted me to turn around real quick and make my hair swing around.  I thought it was pretty cheesy at first, but the picture actually turned out really cool. Tonight was the ice show, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay up too late and get up super early for our excursion in the morning.  I hit the internet cafe to finish up this blog and upload it along with yesterday’s.  There are a lot of photos, so I don’t know if I will be uploading them.  I’ll see if I can just upload the monkey photos, cuz they are super funny.

Tomorrow we start pretty early.  We meet for our excursion at 7:55, so breakfast is at 7:15am. We are going to be in Belize.  We have a zip-line, cave tubing adventure planned.  It goes most of they day so we probably won’t get to shop too much.  Each of the ports have their own little shopping areas, so we might be able to hit those places.  I really like to get authentic items from where I’m at and it seemed like most of the stores in Roatan consisted of stuff that “fell off the truck” and were all things I could get in America, just much cheaper.  I’ll keep looking though.  I have lots of souvenirs to buy.