Two things before I start today’s blog…..
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Last night was the Windstar Crew Show, which is always a fun and funny evening, which showcases the incredible talent among the staff on the Windstar ships. I’ve included some pics of that show. During the show, Matt O, the entertainment manager, told us that this week there are 261 passengers on board from 14 countries, and 211 crew from 44 countries.
Now on to today when we visited the island of Roatan, Honduras. I have to admit that I knew very little about Honduras before today, and really I learned mostly about the island of Roatan.
This island is approximately 40 miles off the coast of mainland of Honduras near the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. This reef runs down the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico all the way along Belize and along part of the coast of Honduras. It is the largest reef in the western hemisphere and second in the world only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Of course this makes for some great snorkeling and scuba diving and Roatan is the headquarters for the excursions to the Honduras portion of the reef.
Its position in Central America, where the land bridge in Panama closed allowing the migration of animals and birds, means that it’s right up there in biodiversity along with Costa Rica, Guatemala and Belize. We were told that iguanas are all over everywhere and that they are protected so not to hassle them while on the island. Of course we saw absolutely none on our adventure there today.
This island is approximately 59 kilometres (37 mi) long, and less than 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) across at its widest point. It’s quite hilly and lush and the hill sides are dotted with huge homes and tourist developments. It is not in the path of hurricanes and because it receives rain on approximately 112 days a year it maintains its green tropical forests.
Historically, the main industry on this island had been fishing, but tourism, has taken over in a big way. Our guide told us that some days there are 6 large cruise ships in town. Thankfully today, there was only our little one. There is also an international airport where direct flights come from the U.S. and Canada. Roatan suffers from the same problem as many of the caribbean islands in that the success of the tourism industry has put pressure on infrastructure and some quality of life for the locals.
Its history is also similar to the other Caribbean islands with various nations fighting over it, slavery playing a role in its early development and we were told that at one time there were 500 pirates and privateers living on Roatan.
The Cruise ship terminal is recently built and is one of the nicest I’ve seen in the Caribbean, with brightly coloured shops and restaurants and even a swim up bar.
Our excursion on Roatan today started with us being picked up on the pier at the small port in Coxen Hole by small buses. And by small, I mean that even turning sideways I had a challenge walking down the aisle of the bus which held approximately 30. There is another cruise ship terminal built by Carnival Corporation that holds 2 of the big beasts and accommodates up to 9000 passengers daily.
We drove along the main road through the town of Coxen Hole past local homes, shops, and markets and gradually started heading up into the hills, and to a lovely resort called Pristine Bay Beach Club, also the location of one of the golf courses on the island. The property was beautiful with huge pools, manicured grounds, idillic beach, with copious amounts of lounge chairs in the shade or now, a bar, and food station, and change/washrooms. It was weird though in that there was no one there, hardly a soul to be seen aside from our tour group. But as someone pointed out, if there had been 6 cruise ships in town today that might have been different!
We ditched our extra stuff in a locker for our group and boarded a covered boat to head out for some time on the water, snorkelling at two different locations.
The water was calm, and the visibility was better than most snorkelling sites I’ve seen in the Caribbean, that big reef out there protecting the bays.
The first spot was primarily sand, with sea grasses where we saw several star fish, mainly yellow. A coral reef ran along side the area, but our dive master kept us out of that area because it was really shallow. Then we climbed back on the boat and headed over to follow the dive master through the coral reefs to go look at a long-sunken ship. The water was shallow and we had to be careful as we went through the valleys in the coral, but there wasn’t much in the way of a swell so that made it easier. The coral wasn’t all that exciting to be honest. Lots of it was bleached, but we did see some purple fan coral which was really pretty, and the action of swimming in among the various corals and checking out the fish was really fun. The ship wreck had been there for a very long time from the look of it and was really rusty. I didn’t need the guide to tell us to stay away, it looked very scary to be near.
After a combined hour or two in the water we went back to the beach and had a light lunch of empanadas. After an hour or so to paddle in the pool, sunbath or swim in ocean, we were back on the bus and headed back to the cruise ship terminal.
It was a really lovely day capped off with a trivia session (today’s trivia was naming the singer(s) of various pieces of music and we didn’t do very well but it was really very fun, because it turned in to a bit of a sing-along) a lovely sunset, a Sail Away and of course another fabulous meal, tonight back in the main dining room.
Lois' Adventures 