Adventures in the Caribbean: Roatan, Honduras

When we woke up the next morning, this was the view from our balcony.

We were in Mahogany Bay, in the island of Roatan, the largest of Honduras's bay islands.

And this was the view from the other side of the ship at breakfast.  

Most of what you can see is Carnival's exclusive Mahogany Bay resort.  We had extremely unambitious plans for today.  Partly this was because the hours we were in port (7:00-15:00) did not allow for a lot of time unless we got up quite early.  But also we were eager to do more snorkeling, and there seemed little reason to go anywhere but Mahogany Bay to do this.

After breakfast we headed off the ship to look around the tourist village and do some things like mail postcards.

The tourist village was similar to one in Puerta Maya in Cozumel--lots of shopping which seemed very inauthentic and overly touristy.  In retrospect this was something Princess Cays in The Bahamas did well to avoid.

Anyway, we weren't too interested in the shopping, but there were two interesting exhibit areas that explained the fascinating history of Roatan's indigenous peoples and the equally fascinating but needless-to-say quite different history of the English settlers.  For a time, the shrimping industry was an important economy for the bay islands, and there was an old shrimping boat on shore that we could look at as well.  Overall I was pretty impressed with the quality of the exhibits.

I was also impressed with the nature trail at Mahogany Bay.  We sort of ended up there by accident, but it was very pleasant and also quite interesting.  Despite the fact that we were smack dab in the middle of a tourist resort, it felt surprisingly secluded and quiet.  We could see the Carnival Glory occasionally through the trees, but mostly it felt like we were on a nice path in the Honduras jungle.

Eventually the trail took us to a bridge, and that's where we turned back to the ship.  We wanted to change and leave all of our non-essentials on board while we snorkeled, and it was a good time to get something to eat as well.  

So it was about 12:00 that we came back to the bridge and crossed to the beach.  

We went to the end of the beach, and that's where there was a pier going out into the sea.

We could look back past the beach and see the Carnival Glory.

From the end of the pier it was only a few metres to reef, and we spent about two hours snorkeling, with plenty of breaks in between to clear our masks and catch our breath--we were still getting the hang of the whole thing.  But I don't think you had to be a rookie to find this to be a pretty great snorkeling spot.  The reef was so close to the surface that at times we had to swim around it.  

There were countless kinds of fish, and rays as well, but the coolest part to me was the vegetation.  In Cozumel we had seen lots of fish, but very few plants.  Here we were swimming above what was basically a sea garden with lots of plants of all colours and shapes.  Some looked scary, as if they were sharp and pokey, and others looked inviting, but we were careful not to touch any, because we heard some horror stories of rashes and burns and such.

If any future Mahogany Bay tourists want to snorkel and want to know if they should just snorkel at Mahogany Bay or go on an excursion elsewhere my answer is simple: just stay at Mahogany Bay.  Save time, money, and have a great time!

Back on board we had time to shower and change again before we sailed off to Grand Cayman, our next stop.  The distance from Roatan to Grand Cayman was the furthest distance we had to go between ports of call, which is why we had to leave Roatan relatively early (15:00), and why we were scheduled to arrive in Grand Cayman relatively late (11:00).

As we headed towards Grand Cayman we went by Guanaja, the second largest of the bay islands.