Honduras - Roatan Island
San Miguel-Morasan (Santa Rosa)
In Honduras for Roatan island:
Tegucigalpa- San Pedro Sul-Ceiba
The trip across Honduras from the southern border of El Salvadore was such a long journey. We took a public transport all the way from Usultan (El Salvadore), changed few times in San Miguel, Santa Rosa, at the border, in Honduras in: Teguacigalpa, San Pedro Sul. During the night we've slept for few hours at the terminal to follow up with the next connection to Ceiba (total coast of public transport approx 10$ x 15h). In Ceiba there was no ferry because of the bad weather conditions therefore we had to take a plane - (40$ each) to the Roatan's island in Honduras. The little avionette was cool (15min of flight). Sometimes it felt as we were falling down but other then that all was good. We took a cab (15$) to wonder around the west end coast to find the place to camp. The beaches were very tiny and the sea was full of alghis, more or less similar experience to Belizean islands. The population is mixed black with Latin, 3 languages are spoken: Spanish, English and Garifula. We stopped by West End beach, a touristic location, near by a local village where we agreed to camp for 7$ per night. The weather was bad, strong wind, ruth sea. We went to down town by a minibus (1$ each) were we had a delicious sea food meal (7$ each) served by one of the best chefs in the village, we ate in his home. As we weren't very impressed by the island the next day we decided to moved on towards Nicaragua. The weather conditions were still bad therefore there was no ferry and neither the plane was flying. We rented a car from locals (50$ per day) and went to the east end of the island. That was the beast thing we could have ever done. It was totally opposite to the West End, quite, away from a Touristic crowd, beautiful and free white sand beaches with a wonderful water, no grass , just a paradise. We camped in a rented car over night at Camp Bay. We took a walk along the beach by sunset and then collapsed in the car for a long sleep. Since we've been traveling we've been going to sleep around 7-8pm and waking up by 5am. The day life is amazing immersed in the nature while during the night everything quiets down and sleeps. I woke up by the sunrise and went for my morning swim. The sea (Caribbean) was still agitated but a little bit less than during the previous day. We took a ride to have some local breakfast (3$each) in the East End village where we ate lobster the previous night. We took a ferry at 2pm (30$ each x 40min) and headed back to Ceiba. The boat's trip was pleasant while the stay in Ceiba very depressing. As soon as we've got off the boat we've been offer an organised bus tour to Leon in Nicaragua (14 h x 65$ with one night accommodation and breakfast included). We new the price of a public transport which would be 6 times cheaper but still we preferred to have a bit more comfortable journey without having to change the bus from time to time. We've been traveling for a last week quite a lot therefore we didn't want too much hustle. We've been traveling for last 2 months a lot but having dis cent distances between each location ( max 5h trip) and staying in one place min 3 days. Honduras was an exception we made in our Central American itinerary. I guess we just wanted to do each single country from Central America, therefore we picked us the best of each one. Roatan was such a disappointment at the beginning because we were expecting the white fine sand beaches with clear turquoise water, but Roatan was famous by its reeves rather then quality beaches. We've experienced it already in Belize on San Pedro's and Culkaker's island and we made the same mistake in Honduras - Roatan. For somebody who is interested in scuba diving or snorkelling the biggest coral reeves after Australian Great coral reeves are either Belizean or Honduras islands. They are also much more expensive than the other parts of Central America and Mexico. For a beautiful Caribbean beach experience I recommend the eastern Mexican island of Holbox. However if you happen to be in Roatan definitely recommend the East End rather than the West End, unless you want to be in a crowd.
Ceiba is really ugly however I didn't see the beach. The town is horrible so is the accommodation. I've got used to our little tent which is clean and ours, so I can not stand any other dirty and smelly accommodation full of insects and dust.
Next day after a 'queso tortilla' breakfast we took a mini bus and went on 16h trip to the Nicaraguan boarder - literally all the way back were we've started our journey across Honduras few days earlier. We didn't know that there wasn't another land border with Nicaragua from the Caribbean side of Honduras. That's why we made a mistake of crossing all the way through the whole country of Honduras back and forth.
