A Long Weekend On Isla de Roatan

One of the things that I love doing is telling people about The Real Honduras. Like any country, Honduras has its challenges but too often those challenges are all people pay attention and that’s unfortunate because Honduras also has A LOT going for it — its stunning beauty is one of those things.

A few weeks ago my family and I spent a relaxing long weekend on Roatan Island, one of the Caribbean islands here in Honduras, and it’s not a stretch to call it paradise. Our family took a boat out to one of the reefs that surround Roatan and had a snorkeling adventure, some of us (the crazy ones) went parasailing, we swam a lot in the warm, clear water, did some more snorkeling at closer reefs, took sunset walks, and did a lot of relaxing. We stayed in an all inclusive resort right on the beach, Paradise Beach Hotel. If it had just been me and Eric we would have found some tiny remote spot but all inclusive makes life so easy when you’re traveling with kids — they can eat and drink to their heart’s content and they have a bit more freedom to roam the resort on their own. And I definitely didn’t hate the unlimited margaritas!  We had an amazing time and wonderful adventures! This is #therealhonduras

Sunset walks on the beach with drinks were our nightly ritual (and, yes, our youngest is in that phase where every pic is met with a crazy face)

My kids are a little wacky

Nothing like sending your three most precious beings hurtling hundreds of feet into the air

Aisleen got to go twice, once with her brothers and once with her Granny

Roatan Island from our parasailing boat

My boys on the beach

I don’t even know what my kids are doing in this photo

Our hotel

Our last day was stormy, still gorgeous!

Selfie with my honey

Relaxing on the porch of our room

Selfie with my sweet boy, who pretty much owns my heart (and he’s actually smiling instead of clowning it up!)

Liam is just a tad bit taller than I am …

Our awesome bartender, Jeremy

Selfie with my beautiful girl

This was pretty much the moment I decided I never wanted to leave

The incredible water of Roatan

Wacky selfie

Leaving paradise is never easy …

This is #therealhonduras, folks! Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise!

A Whirlwind Trip to Roatan Island

We have, for what seems like forever, been encased in dust and smog in Honduras — especially in Tegucigalpa because we are all valleys and mountains. I haven’t been bothered much by it, other than the fact that it’s dreary. At least not until we were on our way to the airport to begin a short, but very appreciated, trip to the Caribbean island of Roatan, when we were informed the airport was closed — all out going flights were grounded and all incoming flights were being diverted. I get why, the airport in Tegus is a notoriously difficult one to land in. The pilot has to make this crazy hairpin turn, turning the plane nearly sideways  in order to avoid slamming into a mountain, before righting the plane and stopping it very quickly on the short runway. Takeoff is slightly less dodgy.

So, yea, nobody wants to mess with that in smog so thick that visibility is only 1 kilometer. Long story short, rather than spending my noon hour standing in crystal clear water with a margarita in my hand I was sitting with my feet propped up on my suitcase in the Tegus airport, playing Plants v Zombies on my iPad. Thankfully, the smog cleared enough that we could fly out and, seven hours after we were supposed to take off, we were finally Roatan bound, with a stop in La Ceiba to change planes. To a 17-seater. Not that I was nervous or anything. I can’t remember the last time I was on a plane where you could actually see what the pilots were doing …

Eric thought it was fun to be able to watch the pilots, I found it mildly disconcerting and kept having to stop myself from shouting “Both hand on the wheel! BOTH HANDS!” But it was a short flight, maybe 15 minutes, and soon we were landing on Roatan …

Our hotel shuttle delivered us to the Mayan Princess, where we checked into a room with this view, which made everything sunshine and rainbows …

This was a work trip for Eric, I was just tagging along for the sand and the ocean (and because I really like the group of people who were holding the convention he was attending). For the record, I was on our dime — just so everyone is clear. There was an event to attend shortly after we arrived, but we had time to take a stroll along the beach before we needed to start scraping the airport funk off and get all prettied up. We did get to enjoy our first Caribbean sunset in a long time ..

A highlight of the evening was a surprise performance by Garifuna musicians and dancers. Garifuna are an Afro-Caribbean people with an interesting history, you can click here to find out more about their culture. Whenever we see Garifuna musicians and dancers perform we are immediately swept back to Guinea, our first post in the FS, which was full of the music of djembe drums and mesmerizing dancing.

After a lovely dinner with folks who are thoroughly enjoyable, Eric and I decided to finally get that margarita, which we drank in an open-air thatched beach cabana. Side note: anyone considering bidding Honduras, most of the places you’ll go on business are not quite like this but, every once in a blue moon, you get really, really lucky! And even the not-so-posh places are oh-so-interesting. So go for it!

The next day was all work for Eric so we woke up early for a beach stroll ..

Exposed coral at the end of West Bay

We’re pretty positive that when we bring our kids to Roatan they are going to ask to do this crazy climb/slide inflatable thingy

I spent the rest of the morning with a book, doing pretty much this …

and after lunch we headed back to the airport. Where our flight was delayed, of course. Still, totally worth it just to stand in crystal clear water and feel the sand between my toes …