Last weekend on Roatan

Does anyone appreciate how difficult it is to wake up at 5:30 without an alarm clock? I was invited to go fishing with Cony, his brother and his nephew and had to wake up early. Luckily, the bars stay open until 4am, so I knew that when the music stopped, I had an hour to sleep. That was the night I spent sleeping on the hammock, Saturday night, which is the reason I was awake at 2am (I had to wait until I knew it was 4am to fall asleep. Does that make sense? No. It's ridiculous.)

Anyway, so I went down to the dock when I thought it was 5:30, and Sean was down near the cabin office. I asked him if he knew the time and he just said "Too early." So I waited, having no idea what time it was, and within 5 minutes, a little yellow boat came along (evidently I have a very accurate inner-clock) with Cony, his brother Loni (who has amazing dreadlocks) and his nephew Anthony, who is about 15. We went off shore and there was a beautiful tangerine coloured sunrise behind the island.

The water was calm and it was already warm, and as we puttered along flying fish jumped out of the calm sea and flew away from us. Bizarre creatures, and nothing like I had ever pictured them being like. Pelicans flew by, too, and a huge turtle surfaced and poked his head out of the water. Contrary to my belief that it's bad luck to have a woman on board while you're fishing, Loni and Cony said that it's actually considered good luck, and within half an hour we'd caught two wahoo, about 35-40 inches long, 'small', they said. We were fishing for tuna, wahoo and blue marlin. There was a huge cooler kept in the back of the boat, where bait fish was being kept, and I asked what kind of fish they were using. Turns out it's tuna. Beautiful tuna flesh being used as bait, can you imagine? That's like $20 worth of sashimi right there. But it did catch some huge wahoo, four in about 4 hours.

The first was small, about 15 lbs. The second had it's tailed bitten off as it was being reeled in (by a shark...?) I reeled in the biggest one, about 32 lbs. At about 11 we headed in to shore, passing other fishing boats along the way and sign languaging that we'd caught 4 big wahoo. (hold up four fingers, stick out your thumb and little finger, give it a wiggle, and then hold your arms out to indicate 'huge'). We sold them onshore (not sure how much for) to a rich American with a huge cigar in his mouth and his hair slicked back.

I went back to the cabin and the girls had gone to the beach (we keep walkie-talkies handy so that we always keep in touch without phones). It was so hot I was drenched by the time I'd grabbed my swim stuff and we went to the beach. We lay on the beach for awhile and decided to head down to West Bay beach, which is a 10 minute water-taxi ride ($2.50) or a 45 minute walk. We walked down there along the coastline which is covered in eel-grass because of the storms from last week, and arrived hot and exhausted to a beach festering with people for the Easter Weekend. I've never seen so many people crammed into a beach. The water was like people-soup and just as warm. We went to the far end of the beach where it was less crowded and public, so you don't have to pay the $5 'beach lying' fee. The downside of this is that there were no security guards watching over our things, so one of us always had to watch over our things. We walked back at sundown (except that it gets dark so quickly we were stumbling over beach rocks by the time we got back. Good thing we eat our carrots, I said to Robyn).

Dinner was at the italian place, which has excellent sea-food. There were some annoying people sitting next to us at the restaurant. The kid, about 10 or 11, with glasses, waved his menu around and shouted "DOES ANY OF THIS COME WITH ANYTHING?!?". In fact, they were so obnoxious we wondered if we were on one of those reality TV shows where they torture you until you crack and then everyone laughs about it later. But no, there was no laughing later. A kitten came and sat on my lap while I ate dinner, and the girls at that table were appalled "Oh my god!?! Does it bite? Look at that girl, she has a cat on her lap. It probably bites. Oh my god." I'm just stating facts here, and will not elaborate on the annoyingness of the situation. I'm not being mean either, just factual. Let's just say that we needed a drink or two to help us get through that awful situation.

Now we're trying to figure out how to get off the island. We were going to fly from here to San Pedro Sula, and then take a bus to the ruins at Copan, but we waited until the last minute to book our flight and it looks like we may either be stuck here an extra day (there are worse places to be stuck, I can imagine), or take a ferry to the mainland and then bus it to San Pedro, where our flight leaves on Saturday. Rumor has it another storm is coming though, and the ferries don't leave when it's crazy-windy. Either way, we'll find a way to get off this beautiful rock. (Or maybe we've developed the island aloofness and just say 'meh. Guess we missed our flight and have to live down here. Meh. Pass me another smoothie.")