I won't bore you with tales of our day of traveling from Copan Ruinas to the Bay Islands, except to say one thing. The only part of our trip when we felt physically unsafe was during our layover night in La Ceiba (a port town that most people pass through on their way to the islands). To make it brief we ended up in La Ceiba after dark, in the taxi of a very unhappy and uncommunicative man, driving for what seemed like way too long to an area outside of the city. There were dark alleys involved in very industrial parts of the city and one particular moment of driving through a back street next to a facility of some sort where Leif and I both thought we would be robbed and left stranded. It turned out that our highly rated hotel in La Ceiba -don't believe all the ratings on trip advisor- was in a sketchy part of town. The hotel itself was actually more like a compound complete with high walls and a guard tower. Seriously. We didn't sleep well that night.
But things always look worse at night and in the morning, while in the cab of a very nice and very chatty man, we realized that although the area was clearly not one of La Ceiba's nicer parts, it wasn't as bad as we had imagined in the dark.
One ferry ride and one cab ride later we were in our hotel in Roatan. We only spent one night here before we left for the smaller of the more populated islands, Utila.
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The lights of West End, Roatan.
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Juan, the "watchie," as watchmen are referred to as on the island.
Utila is only twenty five miles from Roatan but there is no cheap, fast, convenient way to make the trip over. You could make the ten minute flight for a couple hundred dollars, take a ferry back to the mainland and then another ferry back to Utila, or you could pay 55 dollars and take a four hour catamaran ride with Vern.
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We chose the catamaran.
When you tell the ex-pats who live on or the people who are vacationing on Roatan that you are going to Utila for a week they automatically assume that you are a diver. It is one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified and has, what many professionals consider, diving which is ranked in the top three around the world. When you tell these same people that you aren't diving they then automatically assume you are a drunken part-goer or an idiot or both. People just don't go there unless they fit into one of those three categories, I guess.
We had quite a few people trying to convince us that we had made a bad choice and we should try to cancel our plans and stay on Roatan. Utila, they would say, is kind of a shit hole. One in particular would said this -having us trapped in a shared taxi- sporting a blond ponytail and relaying his wicked gnarly diving trip and telling us how he lives in Santa Cruz and he just loves to surf and listen to Jimmy Buffet, man.
There seems to be some sort of rivalry between (many but not all) ex-pats and vacationers on the two islands. Roatan vs. Utila in the ultimate Parrot Head face off. Winner takes all the weed and all the oxygen tanks.
Our place on Utila was only accessible via boat and was as far away from the hard partying of Utila Town as was possible on such a tiny island. Other than the security guard and his family we were the only occupants on a strip of sand called Treasure Beach.
No phone. No television. No internet. If we needed anything we either had to use a CB radio or kayak across the channel to one of the cayes.
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Our house on the beach.
Except for the sand fleas. Or No See 'Ums as they are often called. A little word to the wise, just because they are sand fleas doesn't mean they are relegated to the sand. They love living rooms and bedrooms and laugh in the face of Deet and mosquito netting. There is no escaping them. They bite and they hurt and they itch much worse than any mosquito bite. By the time we left I had close to two hundred bites. Leif had maybe ten.
So even though the house was really nice the sand fleas made just hanging out in the house or on the beach nearly impossible. Which was why we spent much our days swimming and snorkeling in the ocean off of the deck in front of the house.
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View from the deck.
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It was spectacular. There was life everywhere and a constant sound that was reminiscent of Rice Krispies in milk. We saw baracuda, yellowtail (delicious, delicious yellowtail), massive amounts of various other fish, shrimp, moon jellies, lobster, an octopus, conchs, rays, and cuttlefish.
One day we also saw hundreds of little inch long jellyfish floating along with the current. Stupidly we decided to continue snorkeling. I must have been stung at least a dozen times. Luckily they didn't hurt that badly -like little shocks- but they could have been really poisonous for all we knew. It was stupid but pretty amazing at the same time.
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A large school of thousands of silvery fish, maybe two inches long, was always hanging out by the dock and if I jumped in and stayed still for long enough they would get curious and surround me in a funnel of silver arrows.
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I can see now how people fall in love with diving.
Evenings, if I could tolerate the swarms of biting bugs, we would spend time on the dock watching the sunset and waiting for the stars to come out.
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That tiny island in the back is available for rent. The entire island, and the little house that sits on it, can be yours for 120 dollars a night.
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Pigeon Caye, as seen from the deck top observation tower.
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Next up: What do five British families from the 1850s, a one mile long island off of the coast of Honduras, and the Mayan culture all have in common? Pigeon Caye.
