Blue holes and horseshoes

The mountains of Honduras in the background

The past weeks at Mango Creek Lodge have been absolute bliss!  Days have been spent snorkeling around the numerous reefs and snorkel spots, fishing, day trips around nearby islands, relaxing in a hammock with a good book or going for long walks.  The sea life here is abundant and the water is pleasantly warm.

I was privileged enough to be taken to The Blue Hole (a nearby snorkel spot) by one of the guys at Mango Creek Lodge.  Randy’s knowledge of the fish, coral and other sea life is truly awesome.  Snorkeling The Blue Hole just wouldn’t have been the same without him!  Before we jumped off the boat into the tepid, aquamarine water, he advised us not to touch any of the coral as there’s a lot of fire coral around and it causes painful welts and stings.  Once we were all in the water, he swam around with us or swam down through holes in the reef, flushing fish out of hiding or coaxing them out from under the rocks with bits of algae growing on the nearby coral.  He’d then point at a particular fish, a piece of coral or something else he’d seen and wanted to show us,  would surface and then tell us all about it in amazing detail.   Thanks to Randy, snorkeling The Blue Hole was a very unique experience that I’m grateful for and one that I’ll never forget!

The Horseshoe is another nearby favourite snorkel spot.  It’s just inside the reef and about 3ft deep at the shallowest part and probably around 18ft deep where the reef hits the sand at the bottom.  Curved in a horseshoe shape, it has an abundance of fish and yet feels quite sheltered from the nearby drop-off and open ocean.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and our time on Roatan is almost up.  Tomorrow we board a plane to head back home, but we’ll never forget this place.  It has been a holiday of a lifetime.

Roatan at last

Roatan is the largest of the Bay Islands and is situated between the islands of Utila and Guanaja in the Caribbean Sea, just off the mainland coast of Honduras.

Roatan Runway

The flight from Atlanta to Roatan was thankfully a short one (about 2 and a half hours) and flying over the Caribbean was absolutely spectacular!  The sights of the islands, little atolls and bright turquoise sea made me even more eager to reach our destination.  As the plane approached the island, I looked out the window to see the short runway surrounded by the sea on three sides, a very scary sight!  Thankfully we touched down safely and were welcomed by a wall of stifling hot tropical air as we stepped out of the air-conditioned ‘plane.  Welcome to “Paradise”!

Clearing customs took almost and hour and was a rather uncomfortable experience as we were all jammed into this tiny room, like sardines in a can, before being filtered through the two Customs Check Points.

At long last, we made it through and looked up to find a guide from Mango Creek Lodge there to fetch us.  It was then that reality began to sink in … we’re finally here, in the Caribbean!

The View restaurant

On the way to the Mango Creek Lodge we stopped at a restaurant called The View, that has a magnificent panoramic view looking out over the reef and Turquoise Bay, which is very aptly named.  After a quick lunch, we continued on our journey over the winding, bumpy road passed fields and palm trees to Oak Ridge and BJ’s bar, where the panga (boat) was moored and we set off out though the reef and into the ocean, headed for Mango Creek Lodge.

Cabana at Mango Creek Lodge

Our ‘home’ for the next two weeks is a cute little thatched cabana on stilts, built out over the water.  Each little cabana has unique hand carved wooden doors and a lot of the furniture at MCL is individually hand carved too.  The cool interior of our cabana is scented with the wonderful aroma of cedar wood (which the furniture is made from), a smell that will hopefully evoke many happy memories of our holiday here in the future.

Carved door

Leaving on a Jet Plane …

The Caribbean has always been a dream destination for a holiday and at the beginning of 2006 this dream became a reality.

Our destination would be the island of Roatan, situated in the Western Caribbean, just off the coast of Honduras.  Tickets were finally purchased and my Visa arranged shortly thereafter … if only everything else had gone so smoothly.

A month before the departure date there was a small issue with the tickets. We happened to find out that the airline we were booked on had discontinued flying direct to Atlanta (from Durban) a few months before, so the only flight available to us was now via Washington.  The provisional flight that the travel agent arranged happened to land too late and we would end up missing the flight to Roatan … there is only one flight per week!  Huge problem.  After spending just over an hour at the airline trying to explain all of this to them and trying to get on a flight that would allow us to catch the once-a-week flight to Roatan, we got home feeling exhausted, only to find that the consultant at the airline had cancelled the Atlanta-bound tickets while pressing on our return tickets!  Being carbon-like paper, it now looked like we had whole a bunch of invalid, cancelled tickets and ended up having to request the other airline to reissue our return tickets.  What a mess!

Departure day finally arrived and after catching a taxi to the airport, we boarded the plane and then sat and waited and waited, and waited some more!  It was almost 45 minutes later when we finally took off.  The hold-up had been eight very inconsiderate passengers who had booked in their luggage but hadn’t bothered to checked in!  Just as the airline was about to off-load their luggage so that the plane could leave, these eight people decided to show up, all full of smiles and comments like “Oh look, they waited for us”!  Surely they must have heard the numerous boarding calls?!

Eight hours into the flight, we touched down in Dakar to refuel.  It was just after midnight, Dakar-time, and the outside temperature was a very humid 25 degrees.  We weren’t allowed to exit the plane and had to stay on-board which was a pity as I was already tired of being in such a small, confined space and would have loved a short walk just to stretch my legs.  We still had many hours to go before arriving in Washington!

Washington Airport

After many more hours of flying time, we finally landed in Washington, but still have two more flights to go before getting to the island:  Washington to Atlanta, where we’re overnighting to get some decent sleep and then finally Atlanta to Roatan.

Thank goodness for standby lists, as we were able to get onto an earlier flight, which cut our (8 hour) layover time in Washington in half and we landed in Atlanta this afternoon.  Not knowing much about Atlanta, we ended up heading downtown to take a walk around the Peachtree Centre before having an early dinner and some well deserved sleep.  One more flight to go …