What do you do before you are waiting to go over the bar and are stuck at a marina……you go and do some diving and more diving.
We spent a lovely time hanging around Mango Creek Lodge with Patrice and Terry the owners and their guests. The plan, such as it, was to only stay in Port Royal for a few days but a few days turned into 2 weeks of snorkeling, hiking and going in Mango Creek’s big power boat to go get diesel. Vroom …..Vroom. A tour of the hardward stores with Terry. Eye exams (full eye exam for $40 US) and food shopping with Patrice. Not to mention drinks at Sky, a new restaurant with marvelous views of both sides of Roatan!
So what do you do after hunting and eating conch in the Hobbies, you go and try and save them by doing a conch round up and herd them into a protected area. You get up on your horse named Trouble; okay our dingy and off you go to the neighboring reefs and cays around Port Royal, with a mesh bag in hand and your snorkel gear and case the speedy conch. Actually they are a fast as a one legged snail lugging their large house around. Along with Terry and Patrice we brought back to the protected area in front of Mango Creek at least 100 conch. They will be safe for a little while at least until they make the long track back out to the reef. “Get along little conchies”!!!!
We met up with another boat (Astarta, Michael and Barbara) that knew Footloose and were following our adventures coming into Port Royal so it felt like we knew them forever. Astarta introduced us to the art of cleaning and eating lion fish, yummy. Once you get the hang of snipping the spines off without getting stung, the meat is well worth the effort. Of course we both had to get stung once in order to really get the knack of it. It is like a hot bee sting that lasts about 2 hours once you knew what to do for the sting. Our new buddies on Astarta radio over with advice on what to do and did mention no one had died yet……sure enough we survived. So with our new found knowledge, off we go hunting again for lionfish. We brought back a small feast of lionfish to Mango Creek where we cooked them up for the guests. Everyone loved it and we even got some of the staff to try it. The locals are petrified of the fish. We were hoping just like us once you learn how to clean them they will eat them. And most all everyone survived.
It was time to say so long to Port Royal as we set our sails and headed all the way to the West End of Roatan all of 20 miles….and we even did it in one day. We arrived in West End which had been home for us for the part season and could not wait to go diving the next day.
We meet up for dinner in West End with some guests who stayed at Mango Creek Lodge who had moved to a cute little hotel in West Bay. Sue and PJ where great fun with lots of laughs, even if they had a funny accent, being Irish and all, and of course we had to go to “the pub for a wee one” the next day before they headed back home.
Our friends on Niki Wiki (Terry and Jonesy), Patience (Elian and Cal) where in West End so a girls day of diving was arranged and the boys stayed on their boats doing who knows what. The following week Hooligan (Paula, Tim and Negil) arrived and dinners on each other’s boats were planned. With Interlude doing lionfish appetizers…..yeah another group converted…and still alive.
What to do in West End while waiting to head into the Rio Dulce for the hurricane season knowing that the season is soon ending, you dive as much as you can, swim and of course eat and socialize. But mostly you try and stay cool with a dip here and there.
With the tide at 1.9 feet we are headed in on June 3rd along with Niki Wiki and our new buddies High States (Lynn and Randy) to the Rio Dulce Guatemala and cross the famous sand bar…which is affectionately just called the BAR. (Affectionately, if you make it over without running a ground and #@$@#$ if you don’t.) Because it is a sand bar the best advice to everyone is to put the petal to the metal and go as fast as you can over the bar and you should only bounce once or twice over it. Then there is a lovey 17 mile meandering river motor up to the same Marina as last year, where we hope to see some familiar faces and meet some new ones and of course do some boat work before we head to South America at the end of June.
