Roatan Island and the Tale of 18 Turtles

5 April to 10 April

The Bay Islands had long been on Anthony’s bucket list. It is a world class diving location  nestled on top of the 2^nd largest barrier reef in the world. We had not jumped across from mainland Honduras 15 years ago. Cost, time and competition for other beautiful beaches and diving meant we stuck to the mainland on that occasion. 

There are 3 islands – Roatan (the most developed – including an airport), Utila (ferry access only, backpacker island which is also famous for whale sharks, but not this time of year) and Guanaja (very limited infrastructure for tourism). Whilst we secretly wanted to go to Utila, we had chosen Roatan due to our relatively tight timeframes – if we lost a day in each direction transferring to Utila we would only have 2 days on the ground. 

We hoped that Roatan would be one of the highlights of the trip, but we were also a bit concerned. All the reviews were unequivocal about the diving – warm waters, beautiful coral and lots of fish life seemed to be assured. The rest was a bit of a mixed bag. Malaria. Sand flies. Impossibly large numbers of cruise ships disgorging tens of thousands of day trippers  a week. Varying reviews of the relatively limited and eye wateringly expensive accommodation options. More sand flies.

Back in Cancun at the “Luxury Warehouse”, the alarm went off at 4am. Anthony had had a bad night courtesy of yesterday’s taco lunch and we made our way wearily to the rental car drop off. The experience was certainly not Phoenix, but we had left ourselves heaps of time and before long we were through customs and waiting for our flight to Miami. 

The trip back to the US was uneventful, except for ‘banana gate’ – where Liz attempted to smuggle an illicit banana from Mexico back to the US. Realising the stowaway at the last minute, she declared the offending fruit to the customs official, who cracked a smile but still earned us the ‘special route’ ticket through customs. Luckily no one else seemed to have been smuggling fruit that day, we weren’t caught in long lines behind scores of others with ‘special tickets’ and we made our way through fairly quickly. For some reason, the US Customs officers (normally not the most jovial bunch) thought the entire thing was hilarious, cracking jokes and broad grins at each of the (several) stations we worked our way through. It was liked they had called ahead to warn each other of the idiot Australians and their smuggled fruit. The punchline was that, in the end, our thoroughly inspected banana was welcome to join us in the US and was promptly eaten. 

From Miami we were back in the air on another more than satisfactory American Airlines flight to Roatan, flying over the beautiful Caribbean Sea before touching down on the tropical island that would be our home for the next 6 days.

After making her way down the stairs (with a fair amount of concern) Ellie’s first question was: ‘Where is the airport’? She was clearly concerned about the trend downwards in level of development and wifi availability we were experiencing each time we moved countries. 

We made our way into the airport/shack, cleared customs, got our bags and made our way outside. 

Roatan is the biggest of the 3 Bay Islands, about 50kms in length and a couple of kilometres wide at the widest point. It is fringed by the Mesoamerican reef and has a hilly terrain covered in jungle – and beautiful white sand Caribbean beaches. It is home to 110,000 people and hosts up to 15 cruise ships (~ 60,000 people) a week during high season. There is no other industry of any size here, and apparently during low season (May – October) the locals basically fish. 

There is an entire industry built up around whisking inbound cruise ship passengers from their boats at 7am to ziplining, jungle adventures, diving trips or just to lay on the beautiful beaches for the day. By 4pm these groups need to be whisked back to their boats or risk missing happy hour, buffet dinners and (we imagine) Burt Baccarat singalong parties. 

This industry predominantly comprises fleets of mini buses, local drivers and scooter hire places at the cruise port that can charge a fortune to bounce day trippers around the bumpy island roads. They can basically print money on the days in which those 15 boats are in town. 

It also has a relatively more modest resort area, with a handful of resorts bordering the beaches on the western side, most of which will also host day tripping cruise ship passengers.  

Despite this level of tourism, the island (outside the resorts in any case) feels very underdeveloped. The roads are as bad as what we remember in the mainland, there is only one largish ‘supermarket’ on the island (although this was much bigger than we expected) and it still feels very ‘developing’ – at least for now. 

As we made our way in a cab to the Infinity Bay resort (our splurge for this holiday), our first impression was that Roatan felt a lot more like the Honduras than we remembered from our travels 15 years ago than, for example, Mexico. The girls were blown away that we didn’t have to (actually couldn’t) wear seatbelts and the driver was on his phone whizzing around gravel roads and through villages where Iguana was being served for dinner by the side of the road. Slowly slowly we are introducing them to a more diverse travel experience.

Infinity Bay did not disappoint. 

The 200 odd apartment style rooms are built around an enormous pool that overlooks the west facing beach to crystal clear blue waters of the beach and the reef some 50m beyond. Palm trees adorn the gardens around the property and on the beach beyond. Calypso music – interspersed with Latin tunes – rang out from the beach bar. 

A quick side note here to say that this area of Honduras, and indeed most of the Caribbean coast of Central America, feels more Caribbean than it does ‘Central American’ – right down to the fact that the first language on the Bay Islands is actually English (which we hadn’t realised).

Slightly scarred from our Tulum experience, we were happy to see that there were multiple public access points along the beach, and there are no restrictions on getting onto the sand, into the water or to the various bars or restaurant at the resort or further up the beach. 

The kids immediately felt they were in paradise. Within minutes they were in the pool, wondering why our entire 4 week trip hadn’t just been coming straight here and then stopping.  

Later in the afternoon we settled in for our first sunset from the beach – drink in hand watching the sun go from blazing white to warm orange and dip below the Caribbean Sea. Whilst there was no shortage of other tourists seeking out the perfect sunset photo, the place did not feel overrun. 

This was clearly going to be our routine for the next few days. 

We spent our first morning on the island on a combined ziplining/wildlife park/supermarket shopping excursion.  Jose kindly drove us through some of the local villages on the way and talked us through life on the island.

Aside from diving and snorkelling, ziplining across Roatan’s hilly jungles seems to be one of the favoured ways of extracting dollars from cruise ship passengers. Fresh off the ziplines in Mexico, the girls were keen to try this out. Wee spent a fun hour or so zipping around the tree tops with the beautiful water in the background. 

The real highlight of the morning however was the animal park – where we got to see Toucans (the native bird of Belize) and spider monkeys, and pick up a macaw, a baby kinkaju and a sloth (definitely the highlight). 

We also found a new name for Jessie – the chachalaca – which basically means a non stop chatterbox. It suited perfectly. 

After a homemade lunch (courtesy of Liz’s organisational ability and our earlier stop at the one supermarket on the island) it was time for our first dive. This was to be a refresher for Jessie, who had only qualified in January in anticipation of this trip. She was excited, but also nervous.

Luckily, she had had a fair bit of experience of successfully working through fear on the various cenote high jumps we had done over the last few weeks, and she didn’t waiver. After a quick skills refresh, we made our way from the beach and were treated with an amazing beach dive, complete with beautiful coral, loads of fish, swim throughs and a turtle. What a great start to diving here. 

The sun was starting to get low, so we had a quick swim and made our way to a sun lounger to watch the sunset, this time with homemade drinks in hand. We were learning (and continuing to profit from our shopping trip earlier in the day). 

As an aside, the clientele at this place is quite interesting. We were expecting to be overrun with North Americans seeking out some winter sun (or now spring break crowds). There is a bit of this (maybe a quarter) but the rest of the crowd is middle aged and Latino – perhaps something to do with the fact that Santa Semana is one of the most important holidays in Honduras and Guatamala. There are kids, but it would be less than half families. During the day, many of the tables around the pool are taken up by groups of middle aged, kid free Latinos making solid progress through bottles of tequila and other spirits, listening to the calypso themed tunes emanating from the beach bar. It’s not what we were expecting, but it’s kind of fun. 

From here, things started to fall into a routine, and time began to fly – as always happens in this kind of place. We had our routine. 

Ellie, Jessie and Anthony would be up at 7am to hit the breakfast bar and on to the morning diving trip. 

Liz and Sena would start a little slower, enjoying a later breakfast, longer pool sessions and time working on Sena’s times tables and reading to prepare her for school next week (ouch). 

The dive boat would come back around 11.30, and we could regroup on the morning’s events whilst in the pool, before grabbing some homemade lunch. 

Afternoons would be spent by the pool, at the day spa where facials, pedicures and massages were doled out one day (just reinforcing the kids’ view that this was, in fact, paradise), wandering around the local area, family snorkelling on the reef or just chilling out. One afternoon we hired a jetski, and Anthony spent a terrifying 30 minutes screaming whilst the kids drove erratically around the bay. Teaching these girls to drive is going to be a nightmare. 

By 4.30 the heat would go out of the sun and we would pour ourselves a large drink and make our way down to the beach to watch the sun give its daily performance. We certainly didn’t have the beach to ourselves, but neither did it feel overly packed. 

Evenings were spent having dinner by the beach, listening to some fairly questionable music (fair to say calypso is not to the girls’ taste), watching slightly random entertainment and having a dance. All good fun. Maybe a family movie. Sleep. 

Repeat – and count the remaining sunsets with increasing dread that time was going way too fast. 

It would be remiss of us not to specifically call out the diving that we’ve been doing here. It has been amazing and it has been lovely to see how the girls have taken to it. From a nervous start, Jessie is now confidently joining boat dives with experienced divers; Ellie has always been a fish. We have been treated to scenes like we were back in Monterrey Aquarium – with thousands of colourful fish schooling, beautiful coral formations, manta rays, spotted moray eels, massive lobster and crabs. Most of all there have been the turtles – which we all love – and Jessie has spotted 18 across the dives that she has done. 

On our second last night on the island, we organised a night dive which was an amazing experience for Jessie, Ellie and Anthony. We were treated to an amazing show from 6 octopus, more enormous lobster and crabs and other amazing night dwelling animals. One of the most spectacular experiences was when we all turned off our lights and sat in complete darkness under the water and were treated to a show from the phosphorescence in the water. Needless to say, Anthony was holding on to the kids pretty tightly for fear that they would float away, but the experience was fantastic. 

So, Ellie and Jessie have firmly got the diving bug. When asked over our last breakfast whether they preferred diving/surfing holidays over skiing/snowboarding holidays they struggled to answer, which was surprising for them (skiing/snowboarding are typically firm favourites). It sounds like we’ve got some fun holidays coming up in the next few years! 

We are now back on a plane, and travelling back to Miami, where we will bounce to get to New York, our last stop for this trip. 

Roatan was amazing, but even it was punctuated with moments of crushing homesickness and nerves about what awaits ahead. We our loving our time in ‘the wood between the worlds’ but it is starting to feel like it’s time to rip the band-aid off and move forward with the next big step – getting to London and ‘real life’ started there. 

We have one more stop to go, and Liz has already pulled together a packed itinerary for our 3 days in NY. The kids are going to get a bit of a shock at the change of pace, but they will hopefully love all that this amazing city has to offer. 

And regardless, we’ll still have the Roatan sunsets to look back on, and more diving holidays to plan.