We did have a good two weeks together and explored French Harbour, Old Port Royal, Calabash Bight. Oakridge, Jonestown and West End. We stayed in places that had no towns and places with lots of eateries, bars and shops. The weather was really great; everyday sunny, with a nice breeze on board to keep the bugs away and make sleeping relatively comfortable. We snorkeled everyday but two and saw different types of underwater environments. Some places had amazing coral canyons to explore and others had wide varieties and sizes of fish life. We did see a few sharks, some morays, too many lionfish (yes, they have become an issue in the Bay Islands as elsewhere in the Caribbean) and many, many beautiful tropical, colorful varieties. We puffed up puffer fish and saw big groupers and snappers. It was wonderful. This is all Marine Park - so no spear fishing is allowed.
We also dinghy explored though various towns - Yoshi being on excellent behavior for the entire trip. It was fun to see the Calabash/Jonestown/Oakridge area - where you go through mangrove surrounded waterways to get to the next big bay.
On Saturday, we took a bright and early morning tour on Roatan of Gumba Limba Park. We met our pick-up truck in town at 0730, climbed in the back with some park workers and headed up the steep road to the park. They actually opened the park an hour early for us! Here we zip-lined through tree canopies - seeing some cool lizards and laughing our way along the cables as we zipped with our guides Omar and Mario. It was really a blast and we didn't break anything! After our zip-lining adventure (I think there were at least 8 zip lines), we went through the park. We were the only visitors there at the time and saw some huge iguanas, went into a cave filled with active bats (which we were comfortable with seeing the boat is a bat cave); walked a long, wobbly rope bridge to the bird area where Lorna held a beautiful red macaw and a green parrot. Then, it was on to the monkeys. A few guys call the monkeys down from surrounding trees (the peanuts in their pockets help!) and the alpha male and alpha female came along with their one year old (birthday was a few days ago). Then another came from the other side. They were white faced monkeys (the same kind that threw a drink on Michael awhile ago) and they climbed all over all of us. Some of us liked it more than others! There was also a spider monkey - but he was actually on a "leash" as he gets a bit nasty.
The park was beautiful and we were all glad for the adventure and laughs.
We enjoyed a few nice meals out (thank you David and Lorna) and even a dinghy raft-up cocktail party with other boaters. It was a busy few weeks, but the weather, Yoshi, the bugs, the water-clarity all cooperated and we had a great visit. A big improvement over their Turks and Caicos adventure with us.
Now, we're back to the daily chores of boat ownership and back to log entries. Sorry for the lapse.
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