Vacation 2011: Honduras to Guatemala & Back (Part 1)

Tom and I, and our two friends Heather and Breanna, went on a 3 week vacation to Honduras and Guatemala back in November/December.  I'll admit that some of these pictures are shamelessly stolen from them (but 6 cameras between the two of them and 1 between Tom and I, so it was bound to happen... plus makes getting pictures of us WAY easier!).  As usual for these kinds of posts I've broken it up into sections.

We flew into Roatan, Honduras and were picked up by our friendly host Mike and driven out to West End.  We rented a little 3 bedroom house from Mike & Sue's Mariposa Lodge.  It was a convenient 100 m off the main "strip" - restaurants, beach, dive shop!  Plus we got our own kitchen and 2 bathrooms (and hot water!).  We lucked out with weather since apparently rainy season was pretty extended this year (lucked out for the first couple of days I mean since rainy season ended the day Tom & I left).  Evidence of the rain lingered though, mixed with random road work, to leave massive holes of soupy sand on the road.  Not a big deal as long as you were careful where you walked, and stuck to wearing sandals.

The road from Mariposa Lodge to the beach

Lunch spot... pretty staving on first arrival.  Restaurants in West End are really very good, just unfortunately not for typical Central American prices...

The West End Divers dock

West End Divers: our go-to dive shop!  Great service and super friendly dive-masters.  This is where I got my open-water certification and where all of our dives were based out of.

Scuba-Tom

Scuba-Becky

Snorkel-Breanna

Unfortunately our luck with the weather didn't quite last long enough to get to the mainland.  Our second full day there was a massive storm and we lost power for most of the day.  The ferry was closed down for a few days so we decided to take a little island hopper since the airport opened first.  Sue made us a reservation, but it was given away on us (typicaly Central American booking strategy).  We did manage to get a flight out later in the day, but spent some quality time hanging out at the airport in Coxen Hole.  At the end of the day though, we did fly to Pedro de Sula and then snagged a cab from there right to Copan... so ended up on "schedule" anyway!