We were up at 3:30 in the morning to head to EWR, and my bother in law was crazy enough to give us a lift, thankfully. Our premier upgrades to IAH didn't clear, but at least we got the exit row for free, so legroom was wonderful. Flight was completely uneventful, and we landed in Houston to a light drizzle.
The UA lounge in IAH was decent, and we spent an hour or so relaxing. The lounge is on the third floor, so we had a great view of the apron, which was completely dominated by UA (excuse the cellphone picture...):
We got upgraded to J for the second leg, but this being a United 737, legroom was absolutely horrible. Leave it to United to have a business product that's less comfortable than coach... In any case, the seats were wide, the flight was short, and we survived
.
Approaching Roatan we flew over the incredible reef and the West End area, where our hotel was located. If you squint you could just make it out, past the half-moon bay on the top:
RTB is a tiny airport right on the beach. I found it interesting that the control tower is located way off the airport grounds, on top of a nearby hill:
The airport itself is pretty much a mess. Customs, immigration, and baggage claim all happens inside a single room with no A/C. There are a number of Americans hanging around trying to direct and move groups of people (apparently it's a thing here for retired American expats to volunteer at the airport when American planes land), but it wasn't working very well. A nice American lady directed my wife and I to the immigration "group line". I was processed first, but then my wife was left standing by herself for fifteen minutes (after which the agent was proud to tell her how much she "respects the Amish culture"
). And of course, the baggage handlers also made sure that all priority-tagged luggage came out dead last.
The good part about waiting for my bags was that it gave me an opportunity to observe the customs queue. As expected, all bags were put through an x-ray, but thankfully the operator was busy looking everywhere but. When we finally went through, he didn't even glance at his monitor once and lo and behold, we were in Honduras with all our kosher food intact.
We got picked up by the hotel van, which was driven by an incredibly entertaining local. He had his son next to him and they did this whole back-and-forth spiel all about the island and its history. "How many groups of people are there on Roatan?" "Five!" "And what are their names?" "Garifuna, Caracoles..." It was quite cute and enjoyable, and surprisingly informative.
Our room turned out to be in the main building and was quite adequate. Clean, good air conditioning, a fridge, and so on. Other than needing to kill a large troop of fire ants at one points we had no complaints.
We didn't have anything planned with what was left for the day, so we just took it easy, resting and exploring the resort grounds.
Late afternoon and sunset along the resort's oceanfront:
This little guy held on even as waves constantly crashed over him:
After an early night, it was another early morning for us. We wanted to head into town for some souvenirs and fresh fish, find some groceries, and then head to the airport to meet our chartered plane and fly to the next island, Utila.
The lady at the front desk suggested that we walk to town instead of taking a car, and that she'll meet us there with our bags to take us to the airport. Considering that we were running a bit late and town was just a quick stroll down the road, we took her advice.
Walking into town:
Seems legit
:
A lovely crescent beach, with waters so clear that we were able to see fish swimming all the way from the road:
Looks like we've found our souvenir shop:
Who apparently have a couple of yeshivisha guys for sale:
Duly memento-ed, we needed to find some fish. We knew that fishermen often sell their catch on the side of the road, and indeed it wasn't long before we found one. $20 got us three yellowtail and a big red snapper, which he then cleaned in the ocean for us:
Cleaning the fish took longer than we expected, so we were technically running late for the airport. We still needed to get some grocery staples, so we stopped at a larger grocery near the airport. There was a ton of kosher food, surprisingly - it seemed that half the items for sale were regular American brands with an OU. We bought some fruits and veggies, snacks, oil, and things like that.
Our flight was scheduled for 10:00 am, but we got to the airport at 10:05. The beauty of chartering your own plane
...
And now the adventure began in earnest.
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