Back in 2019, we decided to take a trip to Roatan in Honduras. Angela had a dream of staying in an over-water grass hut - and after some searching I found a place in Roatan that had over-water huts (they weren’t grass, but they did have AC!). So we booked a weeklong trip at Anthony’s key, left Sara with my parents, and headed out.
I wasn’t doing this blog at the time, but I did keep a journal during the trip - so my memories from this trip were relatively good as I’m writing this 6 years later.
2019-01-19
Because of the way our flights were laid out, we needed up needing to spend a night in El-Salvador before flying into Roatan. I booked a night at a beach resort called the Rancho-Estero-y-Mar. It was a bit of a ride from the airport, about 45 min but we had almost 18 hours between flights so we had time. The day actually ended up being one of the highlights of the trip.
We grabbed some food at the hotel restaurant (which was empty in the middle of the afternoon when we arrived) and did a little bit of walking around. They had a small zoo, or at least some animals in cages, in the center atrium of the hotel and we got to checkout some of the native animals - including the monkeys, which were pretty fun.
Later in the afternoon, we headed over to the beach. they were releasing baby turtles on the beach and we got to watch them wriggle their way down to the water. We grabbed a drink on the beach after that and did some lounging. We had an 8a flight the next day and with a 45 min drive to the airport, we would end up having kinda an early wake-up.
Off to bed, tomorrow we head to Roatan!
2019-01-20
We arrived at Anthony’s Key Resort at around 10a in the morning. It started pouring rain almost right after we arrived and got pretty cold around noon. I guess we brought a little of Seattle with us.
The resort was beautiful - even in the rain. All of the huts were on the small Cay (Anthony’s Key) that was separated from the restaurant and the rest of the resort by a very short boat ride. Our overwater hut was beautiful, with great views, and water was a perfect turquoise. We did some exploring on that first day, here are some pictures of what the resort looked like.
We ended up taking a pretty relaxed afternoon given the rain - We decided to get massages and then started drinking by the pool.Angela drank a virgin frangipani (which I had never heard of) and she spent at least an hour being wowed by all of the beautiful flowers on the island - here’s a quick video of the walk to our room.
The stay was all inclusive and the food (breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks) was all amazing. Also included in the stay were 2 snorkel trips per day - each about an hour and a half long and on a fleet of boats operated by the hotel. They also have kayaks/paddleboards to take around the island and the next Cay over (Bailey’s Key) is also owned by the hotel and they keep a small pod of dolphins - which are trained by the hotel and are both available for dolphin encouter experiences and sometimes they take them out with the boats on the snorkel trips (the dolphins are well trained and they just follow the boats right back to the pen afterwards!)
As I mentioned, we took a water taxi to and from the Cay - it was a very short ride and I recorded it for posterity…
There were also some native/wild monkey’s living on the island and tons of exotic birds everywhere - basically everywhere we went there was fun things to see and explore.
2019-01-21
The weather was still pretty poor in the morning, so they bussed us around to the other side of the island and took boats from there. Since there was a long bus ride involved, we just did the one trip - snorkel for an hour and a half, 30 min break, then back in the water. We explored three different sites - coxan hole and french harbor, maronlins french porch and five star, and finally honey’s tree - which had these amazing huge towers of coral.
From the beginning, we could tell that Roatan was different - there were tons of different ocean life to see that we had not seen before. Sea lice was prevelant - it didn’t impact us very much if we had rash guards on, but occasionally you would get one that would sting you on the face, hands, or legs and it would sting a bit. There were also a ton of almost invisible jelly fish of all different kinds. None were dangerous, but some were stinging and they were literally impossible to see at times.
The fish also had some amazing invisibility/camouflage skills. Sometimes you wouldn’t see the fish until you were right on top of them.
Angela purchased a fish identification sheet and we stared to check them off as we went - Lionfish, damzel fish, blue tangs, parrot fish, queen angel fish, spanish hogfish. All in the fist day.
At our last site, we were visited by a small sea turtle. He was almost hidden when you looked at him from above.
We returned to Anthony’s Key for a late lunch. I took some more pictures as we walked around the Cay for the rest of the day. We saw some more wildlife, huge lizards and and some funny birds.
We also saw this very large/interesting rodent. I’m sure it’s different than the ones we saw in the Bahamas, but it looked very similar.
We did some paddle-boarding in the early afternoon, taking the paddle-boards around Anthony’s Cay and back. We found a ton of lobsters - probably a dozen or more living under each of the huts (including ours).
We took the kayaks out after that - stopping by Bailey’s key to see the dolphin’s pen.
Security guard called the dolphin’s over for us - he was excited to see us (probably spent most of the day alone…).
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We took a little walk around the back side of the dolphin pen and then hoped back in the Kayaks to head back. It was a little bit after dark at this point and the security guard reprimanded us and escorted us back to the resort - to make sure we were going the right way.
In the evening, there was some live music in the small stage on the island along with a happy hour. There were a bunch of college students staying at the resort as part of a study abroad/ final excursion for their degrees in marine studies. There were probably 15-20 students in all.
We took the water taxi back to the mainland for dinner - Steak and calamari which was amazing and very fitting for our day on the water. It was raining hard again by the time we got back from dinner, but the forecast called for sun starting tomorrow and for the rest of the week. Sunny but still windy.
2019-01-22
Both Angela and I were ill in the morning - Not sure what hit us, the food at the resort seemed to all be pretty high quality but we were also only 48 hours out of El Salvador which might have been more questionable. We stayed in the room most of the morning and missed the morning snorkel, but we were feeling better by noon. Our waiter noticed that we missed breakfast and put together a garlic/ginger tonic that he thought would help - super nice of him (and observant).
The highlight of the morning was seeing this funny bird sunning himself on the roof of the next hut down. Pretty exotic looking!
We were feeling better by the afternoon and went on the afternoon snorkel to Lawson rock. This was both of our favorite so far, the water was really shallow and we were just a few feet above the coral for great views.
I always love the Sgt Majors who are just so tiny but they act so tough when they are protecting the eggs. This male will sit here for the next two weeks just darting up on anything that comes past the little purple spot on the rock (which are the eggs).
I also saw this awesome puffer fish - this was a biggin’…
We rented flashlights and were pointed to a spot just south of the resort to go night snorkeling (this was apparently ok since we had cleared it in advance). We went out for about 30 min looking for all kinds of new critters that weren’t out during the day. Pictures were a bit tough, but this one gives you a good idea of what this looked like:
Most of the time, we were just pointing our flashlights at random crevasses in the rocks and hoping that something came out - and if anything did we would wave our lights to get everyone elses attention.
We ended up seeing all kinds of new critters - Octopus, Eel, Squid, Neon Gobi fish - glow in dark (bad videos). Here are a couple of (not great) pictures of the eel.
And a video of our octopus swimming around. These guys are really hard to see in the best of times, so it was pretty amazing that we were able to find one at night.
I spotted a squid and I think it must not have seen me because it swam up to within a few feet of me, and then it squirted ink into the water and shot away. This was the first time I had seen one do this in real life - I could really see how it would work. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was no longer looking at the squid but looking at a little squirt of ink instead.
The sea snakes were also very cool. We had been told to be on the lookout for these - They are land snakes that go into the ocean and swim/forage at night.
Here’s another one of the sea snake - little bit clearer in the begining this time.
2019-01-23
The next morning we took a morning snorkel to Museum rock and Woozers Bench. The weather was amazing - finally. Fully sunny, with only slight wind. I saw another sea turtle and followed it for a while (I couldn’t find the video of this one). We checked some more notable fish off of our list - Baracuda, some huge trumpet fish, Angel fish, and Damzel fish.
We also spotted a ray rummaging up some food from the sand and the swimming off. I think these guys are just so graceful. This was a smaller eagle ray - not as big as the manta rays, but they can still get pretty big. This one was pretty small.
And, of course, it’s always fun to touch the sea pens. I had done/seen this before, but the pens were all over the place here so you could almost make it a past time…
In the afternoon, we signed up to do the snorkel/excursion with the dolphins. We took the water taxi over and as soon as we got onto the dock at Bailey’s Key, the dolphins started to get excited and swim up to us to say high. They clearly knew that some food was in their future during the encounter.
Before the snorkel, we had the dolphin encounter where the trainer calls the dolphins over and we had a chance to touch their skin/fins. Their skin is really smooth and they seem to like the touch - but that could also be because they get a treat right after.
The trainer would regularly send one away and bring another one back - It seemed like they probably liked these close encounter settings in small doses.
We also got a little anatomy lesson as well as some more details about how dolphins behave in the wild - and in the domesticated setting we were in. I won’t go into it all here - but it was very interesting
After the close encounter, we did the snorkeling session. The dolphins would swim around us, coming up and touching us with their nose occasionally (“kissing” us) and sometimes we could get them to give us a high five with their flipper if we held out our hand. The trainer also showed us how we could grab a piece of sea grass and toss it to them. They would take it in their mouths, swim around, and then bring it back and drop it near us - it seemed like a fun game for them!
After the encounter, we had a BBQ on the island (instead of heading back to the restaurant for dinner) and they brought in some native dancers & musicians to play for us. This was really fun to watch and they talked about some of the history behind these dances - how they were meant to prevent the onset of violence/war (although I don’t remember how at this point…).
After the native dancers, they brought some of the girls up - both from the college program as well as Angela and some of the other guests. It was definitely a different style of dancing… :)
2019-01-24
This is unfortunately where my journal ended. I know we did a few snorkel trips today and we had spent the week practicing getting Angela to be able to free dive when she was snorkeling. Her biggest struggle was getting her body oriented right to push herself down…
But by the end of the trip, with some practice and coaching, she was able to do it! Just get your feet up a little higher and kick hard to push yourself down.
There were some other interesting fish/ocean life that I couldn’t place in the timeline. This fish was really cool - I can’t remember the name of it, but I really wish I could. I’ll have to give AI a shot at figuring it out at some point.
See Cucumbers are always fun to see - We saw a few on this trip, this one was especially huge!
I can’t remember the name of this one either, but this one almost looked like an Eel if you just looked at his head. He was a ground fish, spending his time on the ocean floor waiting for fish to swim nearby.
And, of course, the last of my Anthony’s Key resort pictures - the pool, restaurant, and additional boardwalk pics. There was also a grave in the center of the island, which I believe was the grandfather of the current owner of the resort (the owner of the resort was also the mayor of Roatan, so he was quite the public figure). Clearly there was a lot of history to this island - we really loved it.
2019-01-25
Our last full day in Roatan. We did some snorkeling in the morning, I wasn’t sure where else this video fit, but I thought it was a really cool video of a tang swimming around us.
Angela had continued her workout schedule the entire week that we were in Roatan - which was pretty amazing actually. I probably only joined her for half of them - the regiment she was on was pretty tough actually!
Instead of doing a dive in the afternoon, we went to this old ruins near the resort. I think this must have been Mayan tribes. The ruins were well kept and in pretty good shape - rock buildings are really the only way to go here for longevity given the storms that come through.
Nearby the ruins, there was another small zoo. This seemed to be mostly unattended, we didn’t pay and we really didn’t see any other people or staff. It looked like it was all native animals and birds - The monkeys and cougar was interesting to see. The cougar was one of the small sub-species vs what we have in the PNW.
That was it for the day. We headed back to the restaurant for our final dinner and packing up to leave early the next day.
2019-01-26
Our flight schedule returning was much more reasonable - although it still took the whole day. We had a great time snorkeling in Roatan - Snorkel goodbye for now!
