Island Fever

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From the coastal town of La Ceiba, Honduras, I caught a $50 ferry over to the Island of Roatan, one of the famous Bay Islands. I traveled over with a new friend from NY, another solo female traveler coming from two months volunteering in El Salvador. We stepped off the ferry and stuck out our thumbs, aiming to catch a ride to the backpacker-tourist side of the island. Five pickup trucks later we arrived in West End (free transport was much better and more interesting than the $20 taxi service offered at the ferry dock). We ended up walking a bit also, with our packs and everything, and added to the fact that some invasive germ was causing my body to react feverishly, by the time we reached the cheapest hostel on the one-road strip, I was too exhausted to care that there was no one around working. I set down my bags and fell asleep on one of the couches in the dorm until Leroy, the part-owner, Texan manager showed up. The hostel had as much character as the people there. It was named Valerie´s for the old Chicago woman who opened it 17 years ago. Opened it and forgot about it, it seemed, except to add layer upon layer of new rooms to cover the old, dungeony, rotting rooms on the bottom level. Three levels and mazes of rickety stair cases, wide open-air porches, bathrooms of which only one toilet and two showers worked, chipping paint, inhabitant crabs waiting in the dark to snag a toe, all of which provided for weeks of entertainment. Valerie, a crazy old witch according to everyone we talked to on the island, was away in the states for a month and Leroy claimed to be using that time to clean up the place, since she was unwilling to invest in renovations for a place which she was hoping to sell. I shared an interest in cleaning the place up a little, painting, getting rid of garbage, and whatnot, and Leroy offered me a free stay if I helped out. The way the situation turned out, however, was that Roatan worked more off of island time than I had anticipated, and Leroy hardly had the time nor motivation between beer number one and Judo class at night to put much effort into renovations. The plumber he had called came three weeks later as I was finally leaving, and the work I managed to do was clean up the kitchen a little and scrape some paint.
I was sick for the first few days in Roatan, and spent the first few nights in my hammock, which turned out to compromise my sleep quality, so I moved into a real bed after the third night. My friend Tess left after a couple days, as the heat was getting to her, but I felt right at home swimming in the Caribbean and walking around barefoot everywhere, hanging out with Leroy (Steve Buscemi look alike) and his crazy ex-pat personality, and Canadian Chris (Ben Stiller act-alike), and in the "office", watching the olympics in front of a fan and bulshitting all day long. When I finally started feeling better, I decided I should take advantage of one of the cheapest and most beautiful diving locations in the world to get certified, and along with Leroy, a new friend Kate (who was instantly dubbed the "British chick", as I was the "hippy chick" to everyone including the people at the dive shop), and another guy (dubbed "the weird guy" by judgemental Leroy) took the open water certification course from the most German instructor you can imagine named Lars. I continued on to get my advanced certification just for extra measure, which consisted of five more specialty dives, including a deep dive to a wreck and a night dive. Diving was such a relaxing hobby and I enjoyed it immensely and hope to have more opportunities to do it in the future. It was like meditation, but the most amazing meditation possible being under the water. We saw huge moray eels, about six feet long, just like Flotsom and Jetsun from the Little Mermaid, turtles, lobster, conch, and some huge grouper and parrot fish, along with an array of beautiful coral and smaller fish.
Me and a couple friends became sick again halfway through the trip, Canadian Chris (Ben Stiller) had a fever and headache for a couple days, followed by a full body rash, and then I also got an intense fever that only lasted a day, but that kept me laid out in the office, only getting up all day to go swimming (hoping to lower the fever), and show guests rooms, since Leroy was often not around and I had the run of the place (which was an advantage for the free room, but a disadvantage for all the complaints, of which there were many, understandably). My fever broke that night, however and I was spared the full body rash, luckily. I went diving the next day, which actually felt great. The high fever, however, left my whole body aching for the next couple of days, but it helped to be on an island with friends relaxing my life away!
Basically, I didn´t leave West End for three weeks. Between diving, spending half the time recovering from insane fevers (which may have been more due to the living conditions than anything else), and watching the olympics (everytime we swam we pretended we were our new hero, Michael Phelps!), we had time to walk to another beach once. The one day we did try to rent scooters and ride to see something else, Chris and I had a minor wipe-out, which left Chris a little scraped up and the scooter a little banged up. Luckily, I flew through the air and landed right on Chris, so I was even surprised to find a little bruise on my leg the next day. For me it was fun! All good things must come to end, as they say and I don´t believe...but the island started a cyclical downturn into a funk and I found myself itching to get the hell out. Chris had left, along with other fun friends, and then my camera was taken, along with all the pictures from the last five months, and Valerie´s really started to get to me, this time with no water anywhere, and Leroy´s temper starting to get a little out of control. I received word from a sustainable community in Costa Rica that they still wanted me to come down for an internship. The outskirts of Huricane Gustav caused some crazy weather, which left me energized and gave me the push I needed to leave. I jumped on the early morning ferry and traveled through half of Honduras to stay a night near the Lago de Yajoa, and the next morning another 12 hours of buses to complete the other half of Honduras and arrive in Leon, Nicaragua by 8pm. I´m excited to be in Nicaragua and actually wish I had more time here, but I have to be in Costa Rica by next week, where I will be spending three months before heading home, I think, finally. I should have run out of money by then, and I´m already feeling the pull to see all my friends and family. I bought a new camera and will hopefully have beautiful photos of Nicaragua by the next time I write. I love you all so much, cuidense.
Michelle

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Photos

Half Moon Bay
Once again, not my photo, but the beach right down the street from my crazy hostel where I would swim almost every day.

Comments

[Elsy Bauer]

Roatan Honduras Blog
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