Excursion in Roatan, Honduras!

After two and a half days at sea we were anxious to reach our first destination in Roatan, Honduras!

Nice to see some land after so much time at sea!

For our excursion in Roatan we decided on a beach and snorkel day. We researched online and found a company that sold a day pass to a resort on the island which gave us some private beach and lunch. In the spirit of honesty, this excursion definitely had some hiccups.

We were able to leave the ship, find our guide and get to our destination with no problem. Our first surprise was that the company we had booked the excursion through provided us with a driver that stayed with us the whole day. We were also the only ones doing this specific excursion. While this initally sounds great, our driver really had to just hang out at the resort with us until we were ready to leave. It was a little awkward. Also, the resort was NOT prepared for us to come. By that I mean that it seemed like the package deal we had paid for was not something they usually do. The resort staff spent a lot of time behind the desk and in their office figuring out payment and how to proceed. They finally came back with these generic wrist bands (that nobody else in the resort was wearing) and then asked for the rest of the payment in cash. I missed that detail in my paperwork and thankfully they accepted our credit card.  All of this was taking up our precious time on the beach! 

So our "package" covered not only beach use, but snorkel gear, kayak rental and a lunch buffet. We all had snorkely masks, but the water was a bit choppy so we wanted to get fins from the resort. Let's just say that they weren't nearby and they questioned whether we were allowed to use them without payment and it was a frustrating time getting to a relaxing point at the beach. This continued with the kayak rental and the lunch, where the staff just looked at us like we didn't belong, but we showed them where they had written the word lunch on our wristbands. Insert eyeroll. Traffic was bad too, it took almost an hour to get back to the ship. I'm glad we built in extra time for that!

That's the nitty gritty of traveling abroad, right? It's not always perfect, but hopefully the time we did get to spend at the beach and in the water were still memorable! It rained on and off so sometimes it was picturesque, other times not so much. The snorkeling area was also very bland and didn't have much color, but we still got to see some neat specimen!

Now for some pictures and snorkeling videos!

Waiting for our driver to pull around with her van

Nice shot of the ship

The name of the resort we spent the day at

A mini capybara? 

Can you spot the hummingbird? Nice shot Kev!

Because it was kind of this inlet off the water, there weren't any waves, which I kind of missed

Snorkel time! (not many fish in this video, but a good shot of the people in the water!)

Check out the crab in this video

I am so impressed that Dan caught this octopus on video! So so cool!

Goodbye Roatan!

Sunset on the deck :)

Our towel animal for the evening. Not sure what it is, but it cracked me up!

Cade still has his stuffed towel animal souvenir from our first cruise. In fact it still comes with him on most trips, so he of course brought it on the cruise and snapped a pic of it with one of their other towel animals!