love: Caribbean Cruise! Cont...

Roatan, Honduras
Tuesday, February 14

What did your Valentine's morning look like?

Jess and I had breakfast on our cute little private balcony as we pulled into Roatan. Definitely the most gorgeous scenery thus far. We kept taking bites of our breakfast, then leaning over the balcony to look, or pause to snap pictures.

Look closely into those trees. There's actually a small home and a woman sweeping on that private beach! Can you even imagine? Wow, what a way of life!

I'm thankful this was NOT our fate.

(Speaking of ill fate, poor Costa cruise line! They have had some pretty awful luck!)

This is a little nature trail that was just off the pier. It was awesome that even this close to thousands of tourists and extremely huge and loud ships we still heard the sounds of the exotic wildlife that filled those trees.

Here is the darling little tourist trap set up right off the pier where we bought our kids some souvenirs. A dress for Jayci and a slingshot for Jack. Sorry Xander baby, we still adore you too!

Everything was so vibrant.

After waiting for all those who signed up for our excursion we loaded up in a small bus and headed on the only highway to the other side of the island. When I say highway it really was a small, 2 lane road with bumps and potholes. Roatan is extremely poor compared to anything I've ever seen so while the drive was extremely interesting and fascinating, it was also sad. The people all looked happy enough, so we really were feeling quite spoiled. They all seemed perfectly content with their run-down shanties held together with whatever scraps that could be found, all while spoiled white tourists stared at them through bus windows. It was eye-opening to see such a different, and in many ways better (at least I think so) way of life. School must have been starting because we saw tons of children walking on the side of the road, some with mothers, others with friends, other alone, but all in uniform. We didn't see a single fast food restaurant, and everybody seemed to be walking. Mothers carrying babies in slings walking down the "highway". Men walking to work. Teenagers talking and laughing in clusters around fruit stands and taco stands. We saw 2 young girls, probably about 7 or 8 laughing on a bench. Jess and I both looked at each other and smiled when we saw them.

One thing we noticed that made us grateful for where we live was garbage. In all the neighborhoods we drove through there was garbage littering every yard, road, and gutter. Their garbage system was basically to just pile it up outside at the edge of your property (no bags) and men come and toss it into a garbage truck. We know this because we saw it in action.

Having said that though, Roatan was still the prettiest place we visited. The lush-ness of their wildlife was extremely beautiful.

Here we have arrived at the beach where clear-bottom kayaking and snorkeling awaited us. Unfortunately this excursion was a bit disappointing for a couple of reasons. One being that our kayak guide didn't take us to any reefs so we didn't see a single fish, which kind of deflates the excitement of a "clear-bottom" kayak. And two, we got back from our short kayak trip (probably only 30 minutes) to go on a much longer snorkeling trip only to have a look at the equipment and change our minds. Now, honestly, Jess and I are not high maintenance "pretty people" who have to have brand new things, but the equipment was so sketchy (ok, grimy! literally had moss and slime growing around the mouthpieces) that we just couldn't get ourselves to use it. Especially after watching the employees "clean" it. All they did was spray the mouth-pieces with something. No dipping, no wiping (not even the ones that were growing fungus), just take from one tourist, spray, and pass to the next. Thanks, but no thanks.

Some beauty seen from our kayaks

After politely opting out of snorkeling we just went exploring. I nearly stepped on this guy. I really would have if he didn't scurry away right as my foot hit the ground. We were told that if threatened, the black iguanas could get vicious and tear you up pretty good so we kept our distance after that!

There's a reason no one was swinging on these swings. It was about as comfortable as it looks, and I walked away with a mysterious brown spot on the back of my swim dress.

The snorkeling trip was a really long one and we didn't really want to wait for the group to get back so we took an early bus back to Mahogany Bay Pier, shopped a bit, and boarded the ship once again.

Even though we were bummed about our excursion (we were the most excited for this one) we still had a great time. This may have been our least favorite excursion, but we both agreed that Roatan was our favorite place out of all our port stops. It was so lush, green, and vibrant. When we weren't driving through town it was clean and beautiful, and Mahogany Bay, the little shopping center set up for tourists, was super cute, fun, and clean.