Days 16-19: In Roatan

On Monday morning at 9AM, Dad and I met with our dive instructor, Josue, at the downstairs dive shop at Tranquilseas.

We did three dives in total that day -- Peak Performance Buoyancy, Navigation, and Drift. Each dive consisted of perhaps 15 minutes of exercises followed by a 40 minute fun dive. I don't think any of the exercises were anything we hadn't done in our intro course two years ago in Cozumel, so overall the dives were much less strenuous than the intro course.

The next day, we had two more dives. A deep dive, which involved diving to where the coral reef meets the ocean floor, around 90 feet deep, and a wreck dive, where we went to see El Aguila, about 100 feet under the surface of the sea. Among the highlights of the dives were seeing two fish sleeping atop a turtle (also asleep), a giant grouper, El Aguila, and another diver who killed a lionfish with her diving spear, whereupon the lionfish had a big bite take out of it by a larger fish. After those five dives in two days, we were done (except for the quizzes, which I crammed into an hour on my last full day on Roatan).

On Wednesday, having completed our diving course, we spent the majority of the day lounging in the shade. I had brought a book from the hostel with me, Lonely Planet's Traveling Central America on a Shoestring (7th Edition, 2007), which explained the colectivos of Roatan quite nicely. The book also contained entertaining vignettes of each country's history up until the book's publishing date. It was after a particularly riveting tale of Nicaragua's civil war between the Sandinistas and the Samozas that I fell asleep in the hammock I had been reading in, shaded by the awning above me.

Everything I thought I knew about the uncomfortable, unstable (American) hammock had been a lie.

That night, the whole family went out night snorkeling. Our snorklemaster Dennis guided us, swimming west along the interior of the reef. We saw quite a few interesting animals during our hour of snorkeling.

Honduras doesn't observe daylight savings time, so the sun setting early combined with the constant heat and humidity pushed me into a cycle of going to bed around 9pm and waking around 7am. Which is actually quite useful, as morning is the best time to be up and about on the island.

My dorm room had no AC and, despite having screens for doors and windows, didn't have great air circulation. But the two ceiling fans and single floor fan nearly made up for the shortcomings, and the only real downside of sleeping without a sheet on was the mosquitoes that would occasionally dine upon my feet (the rest of me had a defensive layer of body hair).

Looking back towards my parent's resort, where I spent about 80% of my waking time while on Roatan.

On Thursday, my last full day on the island, we all went to Victor's Monkey Business where a tour guide showed us and a group of Cruise Shippers the very limited supply of animals they have.

The lack of diversity is made up for by letting you hold the animals (sloths), or letting you into their cage to feed them (monkeys and makak).

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and playing cards, until we decided to take a taxi down to West Bay for dinner. In my opinion, the names of West Bay and West End should be switched. West End is the part of the island with not one, but two actual bays, whereas West Bay is literally on the west end of the island. It took me days to get the two properly sorted in my head because of these egregious cartographical misnomers.

Personal grievances aside, I had a delicious BBQ chicken pizza at Bananarama and we took a water taxi from Infinity Bay (not an actual bay) back to West End. My parents wanted to see the hostel I was staying in, so we walked to Buena Honda and were treated to an enthusiastic tour by Nicole, the Dutch girl who was running the hostel for a few months on behalf of her friend, who was the actual owner.

After four full days on Roatan, I was definitely catching some island vibes. Sitting alone with your thoughts for long stretches of time became a perpetually recurring activity, but lacking any of the usual side effects of existential dread. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the next day I would leave the island and return to Guadalajara -- if for the sole reason of airline economics saving me half a thousand dollars if I returned to Mexico before making my return flight back to Seattle.

Thanks for the good times, family!

Day 15: To Roatan

After waking up at 6:30 AM and completely out of food vouchers, I gave in and splurged a bit on the continental breakfast. $15 (280 peso!) french toast plus tip. Yikes!

I already had my boarding pass and security went extremely smoothly, so I was at my gate with an hour to go before departure.

After a quick 4-hour flight, our plane landed and we were blasted by the island's tropical humidity.

My mom captured this photo of Roatan from above.

Roatan is a resort island, the principle activity there being tourism and real estate / construction. In practice, this means everything has two prices — one for locals and one for rich American tourists. Having just landed on the island and being very unsavvy about my transportation options, I was forced to take a $25 private taxi from the airport to my hostel, Buena Onda, which I was fortunately able to split with another traveler whom I met by the ATM machines.

From my hostel, I walked five minutes to West End where I met my parents for lunch. Afterwards I stopped by my hostel to put on some swim trunks to swim in the bay. The day was Sunday, and the locals were out in droves enjoying the tropical waters along with us. After refreshing with a round of drinks at another beach side restaurant, my parents returned to their hotel and I walked back to Buena Honda.

There I would meet a group of girls, two Americans and a Brit. We went out that night to the most popular bar in West End, Sundowners.

One of the Argentinian volunteer girls at the hostel was performing a live set that night. I ordered a Sprite and a freshly grilled kebab before turning in relatively early around 9:30pm.

Day 14: To Houston

After waking up at 6 AM, I immediately took an Uber to the airport. Upon arriving, I found out that our flight had been delayed by an hour, which didn't leave me with enough time to make my connecting flight from Houston to Roatan. They promised to provide me with accommodation for the night.

Upon arriving in Houston, customs and immigration went surprisingly smoothly so I decided to try my luck at making the connecting flight anyway. When I arrived at my gate 10 minutes before the stated departure time, a look of horror filled the airline representative's eyes while she told me the flight to Roatan had already left. I had a "JK" moment and she pointed me to the customer service desk to get my hotel and meal vouchers. A shuttle took me to the hotel after some confusion that "the driver won't stop for you unless you wave at him".

The Marriott experience was actually fantastic. I considered catching a two-hour roundtrip bus to downtown Houston and back, but after it began raining that settled the question for me. I spent all day in the hotel room with the exception of heading downstairs for a delicious chicken alfredo dinner.

It felt great to take what was effectively a vacation from my vacation, just one day was sufficient. I slept around 10 PM for the 10 AM flight I had the next day.

Day 13: Riding my Bicycle

Naturally, I still felt tipsy and disoriented when I woke up the next day around noon. I went out to breakfast at El Terrible Juan Cafe with a girl from South Africa who had gone out with us last night. Returning to the hostel, it didn't take me long to lie back down in bed and sip on water until the afternoon.

I decided what would do me some good would be to expend some energy, so I took out a bicycle that the hostel provides for free to guests and rode it east, down the separated bike lane along Calle Manuel Lopez Cotilla. I made it to a quaint park, Parque Revolución, where I stopped to sit and enjoy my surroundings.

The "dedicated bike lane" that Google claims to continue to run down Av. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla definitely does not exist, and I didn't feel like trying my luck all the way down to the city center, so I rode down to Av. de la Paz and over to La Cafétaria for dinner.

After dinner I rode back to the hostel to pack my things and tried to suppress the Friday night festivities and get some sleep. Luckily, the rain outside the dorm room windows drowned out most of the noise. 

Day 12: What Happens in Mexico Stays in Mexico, Especially Teeth

After breakfast at El Terrible Juan Cafe, I decided to do some more shopping. This time at nearby Centro Magno.

I ended up buying some very nice formal pants for about 15 USD each and some jeans that were somewhat expensive, about 35 USD (which, now that I'm rereading this blog post a month later, were 110% worth the price. I've worn them nearly everyday since getting back to Seattle). The man running the store where I bought the jeans was really friendly and talkative. He had lived in the US for a while, working near Sacramento at a Jelly Belly factory before returning to Mexico with his wife to start a family. His amiability may have influenced my decision to go a little overboard on the frugal shopping trip I was trying to achieve, but the pants are quite nice and were definitely worth the (for Mexico, relatively) high price. Unfortunately, my bag now has about 5 lbs of clothes in it that are completely unsuited for my next destination, tropical Roatan, Honduras 😆

In the evening, I went on the weekly pub crawl hosted by the hostel. The area we are in, Chapultepec, is known mostly for its large selection of bars and clubs, so we were within easy walking distance of many places.

After having a few beers from Bar Mex Wey with hostel friends, the pub crawl warmed up with a few tequila shots and we set out for our first destination, Rock It.

I came to Mexico hoping to hear a lot of Latin rhythms, but it turns out that Mexicans really love American Rock & Roll.

While there, it started dumping rain outside. We waited about an hour, but the rain didn't abate and we were made to walk to the next club in a downpour, soaking our shoes, socks, and clothes in the process.

This place even had a live band consisting of some mariachi-esque instruments. (I recall there being a trumpet, tuba, and drums).

For some reason I thought it would be funny to take about half a dozen selfies with this guy from Mumbai

Next stop... well, actually I can't remember where we ended up next. I didn't take any photos so there isn't any metadata I can rely on. I do remember it was a small nightclub and I had way too much fun dancing my ass off.

Afterwards, we stopped by the hostel, which is when my night should have ended, but poor decisions were made and I went with a few others to a nightclub where legend has it your night will always end if you stay up too late partying in the Chapultepec area, Bar Americas.

I was swinging pretty loose by this time and at some point during the festivities I grabbed a beer bottle, went to take a drink, and chipped my front tooth. The tooth bit went off somewhere onto the club floor and I was in no state of mind to go looking for it.

Whoops

This is actually the exact same tooth bit that I had chipped off as a child while ice skating. When that happened, perhaps 15 years ago, we were able to (incredibly) find the tooth bit on the ice rink and get it "glued" back in by a dentist. Then again, while in high school, about 7-8 years ago, I was playing the silent game in a pool with some friends and we were trying to make each other laugh by doing silly things. One of my friends spun around with his arms out and smacked the tooth bit out of my mouth. It landed on the white concrete of the pool floor. The ensuing search was only exacerbated by the refractions of the sun through the water. Amazingly, we found the tooth bit in that situation as well and had it glued back in. That tooth bit has been trying to get out of my skull for the past decade and a half and it finally succeeded in a place that I will never, ever find it again -- a nightclub in Guadalajara, Mexico.

At least now I can tell people that there will always be a part of me in Mexico. 

I soon left the nightclub and surrounded myself with plenty of water before passing out on my bed, around 4:30 AM.