These last photographs from our trip to Honduras are mainly of the time we spent across the channel on Pigeon Caye. There are about five hundred people who live on that mile-long island and almost all of them have one of five very British surnames. Jackson, Bush, Diamond, Powell, and Cooper. Those were the five families who originally settled there nearly one hundred and sixty years ago and, for the most part, the people who live there presently are still members of those five families.
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Our first trip to Pigeon Caye was made with the intent to find ourselves some fish for that night's dinner. What we found was a kindly woman named Esther who had five freezers filled with freshly caught fish and one large tame brown pelican in her "yard." The pelican, as Esther assured us, was American. From Miami, in fact, although aside from the fact that he was a lazy pelican she could not come up with a reason as to why she was convinced he was American. But, really, the fact that he was a lazy pelican was probably reason enough.
That night we had yellowtail for dinner. I'm guessing so did the Floridian pelican.
In Honduras they celebrate their independence from Spain on September 15th and we happened to be there to witness the festivities. Aside from seeing the ruins at Copan for the first time this was perhaps the best moment of the entire trip.
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Almost immediately after their independence performance ended and all the children had finished their cupcakes and sodas, an unseasonably strong storm passed through and rained everyone out. We ended up taking shelter in a little store and talking for almost two hours to the guy working there because the lightening and rain made it impossible to kayak our way back to our house. We eventually had to find shelter elsewhere when he had to close shop because his little brother was struck by lightening (he ended up being perfectly ok) while out playing in the rain.
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Eventually made it back across the channel but not before we were both entirely drenched by the rain.
Utila Town had their own festivities the next day and we went for that as well. But the only highlights of that excursion worth mentioning was that I tripped and fell getting onto the dock and then I got heat stroke by the time we left. Ha!
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(Nothing says "good time" like liquor bottles and plastic doll parts.)
We spent our last night on Utila on the dock because the power had gone out and it was far too hot to stay in the house. So we laid out watching the distant lightening strikes and attempting to capture them on camera. This is as close as we got.
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The next morning we left Utila for Roatan and the sand fleas everywhere mourned. A very sad day to be a sand flea, indeed.
We had a few hours to kill before our plane left Roatan so we spent it in the water, enjoying a last bit of warm Caribbean ocean. I befriended a bunch of kids who were there with their mother by giving the girls piggy back rides through the water. They asked me how old I was -as old as their mother- and did I have any kids -no, not yet- and how old was my mother -in her 60s- and so on and so forth. They thought Leif had the funniest name they had ever heard of.
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They were great.
It was a fabulous way to end our trip.
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