I think that of all the places we went to Roatan was the place that we were least looking forward to. We had heard a lot of bad things about Hondoras in general, like it was very dangerous and that over 100 Americans were killed there a year, and that there was a lot of gang violence in the area. The ship told us to only book excursions through them here. The girls that we met in Cozumel told us a story about how they had gone to Cozumel years ago and a cab driver had taken them hostage. He took them to an ATM and told them that he wouldn't take them back to their ship until they gave him more money. They said they all ended up maxing out their credit cards to give him enough money to let them go.
So it's safe to say we weren't all that enthustiastic. We were debating whether or not we even wanted to get off of the ship, but we did end up going off for a bit. We realized pretty quickly that Roatan is very removed from the rest of Hondoras. The island was built for cruise ships and its very touristy. The island is filled with different shops... a lot of them are pretty expensive. But I did find some nice little places to get a few unique things there. They don't let locals into Roatan. They have security guards and you have to have a sail and sign card in order to get into the private beach area. So it was actually a whole lot safer than we thought. But we didn't dare step out of that cruiseline/security filled area.
Here is Cody while we were investigating the island.
And here I am!
Here is a picture of our cruise ship. You can see people in ski lift types of chairs in this picture as well. It was a little bit of a hike to walk from the cruise ship down the beach area, but Cody and I were wandering around looking at the different shops along the way. We had some fun there.
I was able to take one of my favorite pictures of our whole trip. I just loved this picture!! You can see all of the people at the beach playing around. We were on a dock looking at everyone. We considered going out and playing on the beach too but we didn't originally come wearing our bathing suits and I had bought some stuff. So we walked back to our ship to drop it off and get changed. But it was such a long walk that by the time we got back we didn't feel like going all the way back out there. We ended up enjoying some of the alone time we had with the pools on the ship. It seemed like whenever we wanted swim in the pools on the ship it was always too crowded, but when everyone else was on shore this gave us a perfect time to relax on the ship.
Here is a picture of the main square where all the shopping was. We really didn't end up spending too much time in Roatan, but it was more pleasant than I expected. I would recommend doing your shopping ahead of time though, because prices in Roatan can be higher than other places.
Overall we enjoyed our day and this was our last port. It was very very pretty in Roatan and I'm glad that we walked around there a little bit.
