A good friend of mine recently came down to visit me to take advantage of the long President's Day weekend. Let’s call him “Russell”. Russell is a good traveler. He’s studied abroad, worked in Istanbul, did an around the world trip, and drove 3,000 kilometers on a motorcycle in Vietnam; he’s no slouch.
So, to take full advantage of his presence here, I decided to take him to the most authentic place in Honduras, the Bay Islands. Okay, I’m speaking tongue in cheek. The Bay Islands are three gorgeous islands off the north coast of Honduras where the locals speak English and Spanish with equal ease. Hotels are big business, taking advantage of the gorgeous weather, sparkling white sand, and brilliantly clear water. Maybe it wasn’t the best use of Russell’s time but we enjoyed our decision.
Not a lot of cultural activities to partake in so we filled our time with eating seafood, playing pool, and snorkeling. Food was definitely more expensive as was lodging but pool was free and snorkeling was dirt cheap. We spent the entire first day snorkeling (for $10 (or $5 if you are a good bargainer)), walking straight off the beach and swimming out to amazing coral. We got some vball in as well with some expats that were doing extended visits to the Islands. Russell did impressively well with doubles! The next day we hired our boy Humberto (water taxi “captain”) to take us offshore to snorkel in the Blue Channel and to Tortuga Channel. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.
Our ongoing joke was that this place was far too dangerous for our girlfriends to have joined us. “Oh man, Leslie would hate all of this white sand.” “There’s no way I could bring Victoria here, she hates fresh, coconut-flavored seafood.” Yeah, we’re really funny. However, on the last day, as I was giving my email a quick check on the hotel computer, I saw a word doc saved on the desktop. It was titled “Dear LP”. I have a good friend with those initials so I opened it up.
The letter was actually meant for the Lonely Planet guidebook. In a few short paragraphs, Justin and Jennifer recounted how they had been taken hostage at gunpoint and held captive for 6 hours. They had been riding scooters on the north end of the island when a masked gunmen came running up to them from out of the forest and forced them off their scooters. Their captors took their belongings and used their credit and debit cards to withdraw money. Once that was completed, they let them go.
That made us feel better about not inviting the girls along with us.
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