Gillikin Adventures: December 2008

Last month Jason and I went on a week long trip to Roatan, Honduras with Underwater Works. We went with about 20 people from the dive shop and stayed at Fantasy Island, an all inclusive resort on a private island off the island of Roatan. On Saturday morning we had to be at the Mobile airport at 5:00am and we flew to Houston where we ate lunch and caught our connecting flight to Roatan airport. When we got to Roatan we had to wait in the customs line forever and a few people's bags didn't make it until later that night but other than that the flight was uneventful(which is always the best kind). The island of Roatan is only about 30 miles long so nothing is fall away. We took a bus to our resort and I knew it was going to be a good trip because before we even got checked in we had already seen iguanas, agouti and monkeys. The resort is on a 12 acre island and there was a ton of wildlife. They have a troop of monkeys, huge iguana, agouti, peacocks, ducks, bats and geese running wild and a zoo with miniature deer, sheep and a raccoon looking thing that are loose and parrots, toucans and a ocelot in pens. Forget the diving we liked playing with the monkeys. This is the Ruatan Island Agouti. It looks like a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit.

This is a monkey peeing on Karen. Ha Ha

Did I mention that the monkeys were really bad and would steal anything not nailed down.

Ok, next everyone always wants to know about the food when you go somewhere. On the resort we had buffets for every meal. They had a special which was usually seafood or a local dish then pasta, hamburgers etc. The special was usually pretty good and the rest was fair to good. For dessert they had the usual stuff but the chef made homemade ice cream and at lunch and dinner we had our choice of three flavors. I ate a lot of ice cream. It was excellent!. One night they had a seafood buffet with lobster, king crab, shrimp etc. It was awesome. One day we decided to get out and try some local fare so Alec and Karen and Jason and I rented a taxi and went to Coxen Hole(which is where the cruise ships come is) and ate at a local seafood restaurant then went to the Gumba Limba park. The food was good but the park was a disappointment. Karen actually grew up in Honduras and speaks Spanish quite well so she was a great asset on the trip. Here is the dining room.

Our room was nice. We had a king sized bed and large bathroom with a large walk in shower. The only problem with the room was they didn't give you any blankets and the air conditioners worked real well. The first few nights we froze and then we started managing the AC better. I like a cold room and lots of blankets but hey, I managed. The view from our room:

At night they had activities planned for us. These are Garifunas dancers that performed for us. We also had karaoke night(yes I sang and no it was not pretty), fire dancers and bar hopping night.

Excursions: We did a couple of excursions. Karen and I did the dolphin excursion. We went to marine research center and hand a dolphin encounter where you get to pet and take pictures with the dolphins then we got to snorkel in the dolphin pen with about 2 dozen dolphins. It was pretty awesome and if i get the opportunity I will definitely do it again. We also did the rain forest canopy zip line tour. 13 zip lines crisscross a valley. It was beautiful and tons of fun.

Ok, finally the diving. We had three dives a day and all the dives were minutes from the dock. There was a locker room at the dock so we just grabbed our gear and jumped on the boat. Our group dove together and we had the same boat with the same dive master and captain every day so that was nice. We dove at 9, 11:30 and 2:30 then after the last dive you could get dropped off at the dive gazebo and do some wrecks plus one night dive off the boat plus unlimited diving from the dive gazebo. We did the night dive and one drop off dive then one night snorkel just the 2 of us.