Monday, June 24, 2013

Another week in Roatan


Another Week in Roatan
Sunday 16 June – Sunday 23 June

Week starts off with cloudy skies and we have rain most of the day on Sunday and Monday. A wonderful shrimp piazano (sp?) dinner on Ultra. Tuesday the sun is trying to come out Steve takes the dinghy to go for a haircut while I get a taxi to take me to La Pina Spa. A beautiful spa located at the Pineapple Villas. Have a wonderful massage and get my haircut at their salon. Tuesday night, along with several other boats, we order pizza and ate it on the marina deck. Then Ultra showed us all a movie. They set the screen up on their deck, plugged the projector into the outlet on the dock and we sat in the lawn chairs watching the movie outside, so glad the rain stayed away.

Wednesday Steve is working on upgrading his PADI card so he won't get a hard time when he goes to rent tanks. Darren from the dive shop put him in touch with Jana an instructor. In between lessons he puts a coat of water proofing on the bimini. I went snorkeling with Bill & JoAnne over to Lobster city. A 3 minute dinghy ride from our marina next to Little French Cay is a very shallow area where there are 100's of lobsters. All part of Roatan's marine park so they are safe. This place is amazing, under EVERY little rock ledge there are several huge lobsters. You would be hard pressed to find this many lobsters in such a small area anywhere else. They are out just walking around, and some even come out to greet you to see what you are doing. Even got to see a moray eel this time. That night our HH gets rained out half way thru so we quickly run to the porch in front of the now unoccupied rooms by the dock. Steve gets done with his night wreck dive just in time to join us for a drink as we are finishing up. Steve had made a delicious Thai Beef Massaman stew the other rainy night, and we had plenty left over. Just needed to make rice so Bill & JoAnne joined us for dinner. 
 
Thursday, Steve goes with the dive boat and his instructor to do 2 more dives while I take the dinghy and go with Bill & JoAnne to do one dive from the dinghies. Jana is working hard getting Steve all he needs for his upgrades and found the tests he needed to take. So we were pretty sure he would be done so Friday looked to be a free day so we made plans for a car rental. Steve worked hard completing all the questions while I made a salad for a joint dinner on Ultra that night making plans for the following day.

Friday morning the rental car was delivered at 9. Jana came by then also to review Steve's answers, he missed the section on navigation so he had to finish that part up. WOO HOO he passed, only missed 2 questions, so now he has his Advanced Open Water certification. So by 10 we were on our way in the rental car. Since we did not get to see much of the east end of the island we went that way first. The rental car was delivered with not a whole lot of gas so I got a little nervous especially when we could not find any gas stations on the map out east where we were. We missed the turn offs to Jonesville & Oak Ridge two places that showed they had gas and wound up out at Paya Bay. Enjoying beautiful sites along the way. Went thru the village of Punta Gorda on the way back to the main road. Then stopped at Cal's again for lunch before passing by our marina on the way to French Harbor and a gas station. We had a Hyundai Accent and I know they get good gas millage but some of the “roads” we were on got very steep and were gravel with a lot of holes & bumps so not the best conditions for fuel efficiency. But now we had enough gas to comfortably drive around and make a few stops at supply places. Both Ultra & us had a list of a few things we needed from hardware stores so while we had a car and could easily get to them that was added to the sight seeing. We make it back over to West End and this time spend a little more time in the shops. Have a drink as the sun sets, then watch as the streets get busy at night time. Find a street vendor for some good cheap dinner then head back to the marina.

Saturday we get up early to use the rental car to bring the dinghy gas cans to the gas station to fill up then go to the grocery store to load up all before 9 when the rental car agent is due to come pick the car back up. During our island tour on Friday, we learned about an event going on Saturday night at the Parrot Tree Plantation and had stopped by to ask about it. They were calling it Noche de risa AKA Laughter night. So for a change we thought it would be fun, so I announced it on the morning net to see if any of the other boats would want to go. We had a good response and said we would work on how we would get there. We tried to get Fantasy Island & Parrot Tree to give us free transport it is not that far and they do it for people going to the airport BUT not for us. We got Parrot Tree down to sending a van for $5 a person, then JoAnne negotiated a better deal with Hyde tours for only $3 round trip per person. We had 8 people going but then at 4 another boat came into the marina, and even though they just did a crossing from Caymans the couple wanted to join us, letting their teenage son and daughter stay on the boat in the safety of the marina. We were picked up at 6 after a short HH on the marina deck then went to Parrot Tree, for the other 6 joining us their first time to see this beautiful property. The set up was great and they had a Mexican food buffet for $6, the only thing we did not think of was that the “show” would be in Spanish! Not sure how funny the performers were as the Spanglish speaking people were not laughing very much, but at least they understood what was being said. We all had a good laugh about the fact that we could not understand what was being said and enjoyed a night out at another beautiful spot.

Sunday we are getting the boat ready for a Monday departure. We have Bill & JoAnne over for dinner as they celebrate their anniversary. Steve will go check out first thing Monday morning then we will do an overnight trip to Livingston Guatemalan to check in to the country that we will spend hurricane season in.

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