Roatan, Honduras (Paradise)

About a week and a half ago, my sitemate Alicia and I set out on an adventure that will be hard to capture in this blog, but I will try my hardest.  We took an early shuttle out of Antigua to Copán, Honduras.  We went to the ruins and stayed in this cute little hostel.  The ruins were pretty cool and I loved that Alicia absolutely loved it.

The next morning we continued our way East towards the Caribbean.  We took the ferrie over around 4 pm and were lucky enough to see the most beautiful sunset (only to find out it was the first of many).  We were surrounded by couples so we agreed that this week we would make our own fun and joked about holding hands under the water...which actually did happen on our night dive :)

We started our scuba certification on Monday and were in the water by mon afternoon.  Alicia and I were born pros.  Ha.  We both loved it so much, it almost seemed natural to be swimming in the water like a dolphin, my life long dream.  On one of our dives we saw a sea turtle! It was so frickin' cool I wanted to follow it forever.  We also saw a five foot eel.  Opening it's mouth wide open, it reminded me of the Little Mermaid.  So, of course I was forced to pretend I was Ariel for a few minutes. 

The Scuba shop we stayed at (Coconut Tree Divers) was amazing and so welcoming.  We immeditely made friends with everyone there, old and young.  They had cheap beers for the last dive of the day and part of the cost went to a donantion to the barrier reef park. I made my cuba libres with the instructors in the back office with their secret bottle.  After a few drinks, sitting and sharing stories about all of the dives, we head over to Sundowners, where we watched the sunset.  This was our daily routine from mon-fri.  Dive all day and drink on the beach.  I don't think I could have had a better vacation. 

As some of you may know, I am scared of sharks and kinda scared of the dark.  So, going on a night dive was not going to happen.  But, I don't let my nerves prevent me from experiencing something amazing...so I went.  We got our equipment ready and then the mosquitos hit us hard.  Alicia and I were running around the boat smacking ourselves, basically looking like crazy people, until we set sail.  I told Alicia that I was scared and we were going to have to hold hands...but right before I got in the water I realized she was on the other side of the boat.  It took me a few minutes to actually get myself to roll off the boat.  I immediately swam over to here and had a little freak out when we started descending.  We got to the  bottom and it was DARK.  I took a few breaths and didn't allow myself to freak out, because I easily could have.  We held hands for the first ten minutes.  I dídn't really like diving at dark because you can't really see much and it wasn't as pretty. 

But, about twenty minutes into our dive our instructor clinked her tank and we swam over to her.  We saw a octupus eating a sea cucumber!  The cucumber was huge!  It was so frickin' cool Alicia and I couldn't stop watching.  Then after that we sat on the bottom of the ocean floor in a circle.  We turned off our flashlights and all of the sudden I was in a magical place.  It was completely dark, but there were these pearls that glow in the dark that were everywhere.  And if you moved your hands all around there were these bugs that lit up.  We just sat there for twenty plus minutes, on the ocean floor, watching.  Man.  It was amazing.  Then we ascended back up and when we got to the top we just floated on the water and watched the stars. 

Our last day we took a water taxi to West Bay Beach, which is one of the top ten beaches in the Caribbean.  It did not disappoint.  We just relaxed and enjoyed the crystal clear water and the amazingly soft sand.  We got some good food and a nice cold coke.  We were about to leave on a water Taxi when one of our friends, Ken, flagged us down.  Ken is about 60 years old and so cool.  His sister lives in Roatan and hes just been diving there for months, not wanting to go home.  We had a great time talking about life and throwing back some drinks.  We finally headed back for our last night out. 

That next morning we left completely exhausted.  It was a bit pricier than I expected, but it was worth every second.