Ian and Sean have a small little house that they are graciously allowing us to crash at. It is in a small town called Punta Gordo on the Northwest coast of Roatan. The town was formed in 1797 when the Garifuna landed here after being exiled from St Vincent and the lesser Antilles???

This town is almost exclusively black, with the locals speaking three languages, Spanish, Garfunia, and English with a bit of Creole to it. There isn’t a lot going on here, compared to the Southwest end of the island. Sean and Ian are here with a group called Project Trust. They place volunteer teachers in different schools around the world. Ian and Sean have been here for almost 10 months, and leave in August. They are given room and board as well as a small stipend. It does seem like a really good program. They each teach three or four English classes a couple days a week. The rest of the time is their own. I think that spending a year here would be taxing as there is so little to do, but maybe it’s different when you live here rather than just visit…

West end, west bay and French Harbor, are borderline on what I want to call little America. Lots of chain restaurants, tourists, and more dive shops than you can count. It is about a 40-minute drive from Punta Gordo to the West end. Everything in West end was sold at tourist prices. We didn’t care for that much but we spent the day there anyway. We ate lunch at a place called Rudy’s as it had free wifi and semi reasonable rates. I paid about 150 L($7.50) for a omelet orange juice and a bottle of water. But I used the Internet for about two hours. In west end the Internet was 100L an hour, so I actually made out pretty well for that meal. The shear amount of dive shops in town will blow your mind. I thought there were a lot of dive shops on Cozumel, I was wrong. Every other building or at least every third is a dive shop or has one attached to it. I have not seen that many divers here and it seems that things are going rather slow right now. I am loving seeing all the shops and wish I had the money to go dive with all of them. The little pocket map of the island has most of the dive sites on it and it really just looks like a ring of little red and white flags around the island. So far I have only been to two sites but I enjoyed them both.

We have gone from one end of the island to the other and we have managed to do it without using taxis. The taxis here are really expensive. We have been hitching, everywhere we go. It is a lot of fun when you get rides, not so much when your standing waiting for better than an hour. It just shows there are always people willing to help out if you just ask. Hitching has been interesting, the different people we have meet and the different vehicles we have rode in. It reminds me that hitching is a valid form of travel, might have to start using it more rather than the bus. Who knows?

More later…