Aloha Everyone,
Our choice for a day excursion on Roatan Island was an overview of the place. The packaged tour, "10 Top Attractions" started with a visit to an Iguana reserve where 3,500 iguanas are kept to safeguard them from being hunted as food. Iguana can live to be 100 years and they shed their skin once a year. Males have prominent jaw bones and spines while females have green underbelly.
Some visitors were comfortable holding and even kissing tiny iguanas, but I preferred to just capture their images with my iPhone.
Sheila, our tour guide was an ebullient, energetic single mother of 4 teenagers. She laughed easily at her own jokes and made everyone feel welcome.
The main language spoken on Roatan is English, but the official language of Honduras is Spanish. There is only one road on the island.
Major industry of the island is tourism. From a small sleepy place with a population of 1,000 in 1980, today the island's population has mushroomed to 85,000.
The jungles of Roatan reminded us of the rainforest on the island of Hawaii, whereas fine sandy beaches made us nostalgic for the shimmering sandy beaches of Oahu.
Humidity was high, but traveling in an air conditioned bus was comfortable. J.J. and I came away feeling that it was a well spent 4 1/2 hours at the cost of $120 for the two of us.
Aloha -- Cathi
