Team Roatan 2008-Day 2 (worldvets.org)

Morning finds us well rested after a night in a hotel near the Houston
airport. The rumor is the hurricane will hit Houston later today. At
6am the airport is open as usual, but will be shutting down at 2pm.
Our original (pre-hurricane) flight directly into Roatan is cancelled
and we are booked on a flight that goes to San Pedro Sula, Honduras
instead. We are thankful to be getting out of Houstn, even though we
don't know how we are going to get to Roatan once we land. We will
worry about that when we get there.

We arrive and find ourselves in the long line of weary plane
passengers waiting to go through immigration. It takes about an hour,
but we go through with no problem. We eagerly make our way to the
luggage area, hoping our precious cargo made the trip with us. Yes,
all 4 bags are there and in good order. As we happily load our 4 bags
of medical supplies on a cart, I glance at a guy standing in the
customs area holding a semi-automatic. I suddenly realize we were
planning on going through customs in Roatan, where we have connections
and documentation from officials there who are aware of our arrival.
Now we are in a whole new ballgame. The San Pedro Sula customs
officers don't know us from Adam. Fortunately we make it through without any complications.

With that hurdle out of the way, we must now find a way to get from
San Pedro Sula (on the mainland of Honduras), to Roatan ( a
not-so-nearby island). Dr King asks around and discovers all "island
jumper" flights are booked. Our only option is to take a ferry. The
more questions we ask, the bigger the challenge seems to be to get to
the ferry. We end up getting a driver with a van. He speaks no English
at all and has to give an interpreter a portion of the fare he
collects from us as a "kick back" to the get the deal negotiated. We
pile our bags in the van, slam the door shut and jump in. Although
Marcos, our driver, speaks zero English, he understands that we need
to be at the dock 170 miles away in less than 3 hours. Marcos, knows
every pothole, bump and jag in the road as we pass bus after bus,
cement trucks and almost every other kind of vehicle you can imagine.
We go through 3 different "road blocks" policed by guys with machine
guns, but we get waved on through with no search. We end up at the
ferry with 4 minutes to spare.

Walking up the ramp to the relatively new looking ferry we notice all
the locals rushing up a set of stairs to an area on top on the boat.
We don't want to look like rookies and so we rush up the stairs with
them. As we get to the top of the stairs, there are rows of seats
quickly filling in an open area on top of the boat. There is no roof
and it is steamy and hot. We decide to go downstairs and to our
delight find a nice air-conditioned area at the front of the boat with
a bunch of unoccupied seats. We pick out a seat right in the first
couple of rows. A few locals trickle in and begin to fill in the seats
around us. A cute little girl and her family sit behind us and chatter
away in Spanish as the boat pulls away from the dock. A guy wearing a
blue shirt with a Galaxy Ferry logo on it appears at the front of the
nice air-conditioned room. Starting at the front row, he pulls out
plastic bag after plastic bag and hands it to the people to pass down
the row. I take one to be polite.

The little girl behind us squeals and giggles as the boat gently rocks
over a big rolling wave. The rhythmic rocking of the boat sooths our
travel weary soles. As I begin to nod off the little girl in the row
me begins to whimper. She raises her voice and cries out something
load in Spanish. Suddenly the little girls parents start yelling and
jump out of there seats as I hear a splattering noise. The stench of
vomit fills the air. Dr Cathy jumps from her seat which is directly in
front of the girl and moves up a few rows. She plops down and throws
her backpack in the seat next to her. She leans forward and puts her
head in her hands. She has a pink and white striped plastic bag
clutched in her hands. The gentle rolls are now huge pounding lurches.
¾ of the people sitting in the nice air-conditioned front of the boat
are filling their barf bags. The guy in the blue shirt is sweating
bullets as he stands at the front of the boat watching for that look
that only people have right before they spew their guts. He comes and
gets your full bag, hands you 5 or 6 paper towels to mop your sweating
wipe the drool from your mouth and gives you a new pink and white bag.
Out of respect for my good friend, I will end this part of the blog
here and just say that the ferry did make it to the other side.

Sandra is there to meet us when the boat docks. She became a World
Vets member about a year ago; before we even planned a project in
Roatan. As soon as she saw our project to Roatan appear on the
website, she emailed us and said "I see you're coming to Roatan. I
live here and would love to help. Sandra is part of ROAR, an animal
rescue organization on the island. Without her help this project would
not have been possible.

Sandra drove us to our villa, a beautiful house on the beach in West
End. We slept all slept well.

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