Together with "Miss Molly2" and Oceanis I" we sailed to the next Bay Island, Roatan. We arrived in early afternoon and were lucky to have the sky clear off clouds, because the French Harbour Bay entrance has reefs on both sides and requires good eye navigation. As we learned later, this year couple boats ended up on the entrance reefs. The bottom of this harbour is not even, from 10 up to 44 feet, and in the strong wind couple boats start drugging. Luckily the harbour hosts couple marinas to hide from the high winds. After couple days on the anchor we moved to "Fantasy Island" marina, when the wind prediction was up to 40 k/h. This marina is very small, run down, with very limited amenities and impossibly lots of sand flies and mosquitos, but very socially active. The manager, Aussie Pit, who lives there on his sailboat, conducts "happy hour" from 4-7 pm every day, with very cheap drinks and a very loud music from sixties-eighties. We quickly became part of the "family", but having parties every night became kind of burdensome. On one Sunday night Dominic (local gringo married hondurian and has a little girl) took us for a ride around the island on his pick-up track, and we ended up at the north side of island, Gorda point, in the Garifunas village watching black ladies and young girls competing in their local dance under the african drums beat. The 6 drums were played by the young local boys, for hours without stop! Their band team also had a boy playing on the conch shell - that was very impressive!. At 5pm the armed police and military arrived and ordered to close all bars around - no more drinks are allowed to sell after 5pm on Sunday.
To get around the island we used the local buses (L25-30), and taxis (about the same price). We spent a day at the West End Village and checked out the West End Bay anchorage - very beautiful and very calm, can dive to explore the reefs right from your boat.
On May 21, Friday we took a ferry to the mainland city La Ceiba. It's the third largest city in Honduras, though it looked more like rundown provincial town to us. The ferry tickets aren't cheap, $25/person one way, but the trip there was very comfortable and short, just 1.5 hours. We stayed in the Hotel de Espana for two nights, cituated in the mercado area and close to the main avenue, where the main parade for the anual Carnival in La Ceiba happened. Hondurans boasting that La Ceiba Carnival is the second after Rio de Jeneiro carnival, but we were a bit disappointed, especially after participating in Grenada's and Baranquilla's carnivals. We were happy to find comfortable shady table in the little cafe to watch Carnival's parade. After parade there were parties on each street corner with bands playing reggaeton and latino music, people dancing on the streets. The next day we got a taxi to go the Punto Bonito Resort for lunch, the food was exceptionally good and surroundings are amazing, but it's very pricey place. The late afternoon we took the ferry back to Roatan, which was not very pleasant trip because of the very stormy weather.
We spent another week at the Fantasy Island marina, having parties every night at the Aussie Pit "serve yourself" bar. A lot of dancing, drinking and laughing with new friends, Argentinians Silvia and Jorge from "Garua". What a great chance for us to practice our Spanish, especially Castiliano Spanish.
May 29 - June 1 Cochinos, Bay Islands, Honduras
Just a short sail to the next stop - beautiful and quite Cochinos Cays. We anchored at the Grande Cochino bay, even though we tried really hard to find promised moorings (none of the moorings had the surface line attached any more). These little islands compose the National Park, and some of the islands are prohibited to access by tourists. The Pequeno Cochino is the islands where Survival TV show is filmed, but too bad we could not land on it. There are some private houses built on the Grande Cochino (strangely, all owners are gringos!), one Dive Resort, Turtle Bay, and Garifuna fishing village on the north side. We explored a lot of the reefs around that island - they are just amazing! Saw tons of the miniature jelly fish and huge parrot fish. There were hundreds of the different types of corrals and all of them very alive and vivid colors. We also visited another Garifuna fishing village on the nearby little cay and had very tasty lunch at Faust's cantina.
June 2 - June 7 Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras
The weather started changing, and we have to go to hide from the stronger winds. There was no wind at all and we had to motor all the day to Utila island. What an island! So far, the most interesting island in Bay Islands with its own "hippy" character. To bad we did not stay there longer, just couple days. But I would definitely return there and spent at least couple weeks in this little world of expats, great restaurants, abandancy of the cheap diver shops (the cheapest diver certification you can find in Carribean), and couple of the "free dive" shops. Kevin took 3 days classes of the free diving and "graduated" with honer, Even though he did not reach depth of the 71 feet on the last day, the 41 feet free dive (just mask and fins) is more than sufficient! This magic island has a Yoga studio where they have some Ashtanga classes, but I did not have chance to attend, because we left the island so soon.
In our opinion, the best food (indian and vegetarian) is served in Jade Seahorse Utila restaurant and hostel. The curries there are the there! There decor of Jade Seahorse is very unusual, everything is made of or decorated with recycling materials, like glass bottles, old computer motherboards, pieces of the old tiles, woods, etc. Amazing place!
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