Roatan, Honduras

I'm going to try to get back to blogging. I do the same thing time and time again. I get so overwhelmed at everything I feel like I want to blog about and then just don't do any of it. Baby steps, baby steps. I am taking a writing course right now in my master's program so it has inspired me to start writing more. We'll see how it goes.

We had a four day weekend in October for Revolution Day here in Guatemala. About three weeks before, I got an email from a co-worker that said, anyone interested in going to Roatan Honduras (a beautiful Caribbean island with white sand and clear water beaches...aaahhh)? She said, we are going to charter a plane there. I was like WHAT?!?!? A chartered flight. Well, when it came down to it, it was cheaper if we could find 19 people to go to fill up the seats on the flight than it was to buy a commercial plane ticket. And the flights on TACA airlines make three stops and take about 5 1/2 hours where our flight made no stops and took an hour and 15 minutes. Oh and we could pick our departure times for coming and going! So I signed up, and 19 of us were headed for paradise for four days! Chartered flight and an all inclusive resort, doesn't get much better than that in my opinion!

This was our plane that took us to and from Roatan. Just us and two very young pilots! :)

Here we are getting on the flight! No going through security, no getting to the airport two hours early, nothing. The company did all of our departure taxes and passport checks in Guatemala before we left. We just showed up about 6:30 and were in the air by 7. Oh and they even have a parking lot where we could leave our cars right by the hangar.

Because of our early departure time, we got the resort, had breakfast, and were on the beach in paradise by 10 am!!! It was awesome. The beach was absolutely beautiful, not too crowded. Maybe partly due to the political turmoil in Honduras, but we didn't mind at all!

Where I spent a lot of my vacation!

What more can you ask for, even the ice cream man walks up and down the beach?? :)

So beautiful, I couldn't get enough!

Cold beer, waiting for us at the all inclusive!!!

Each night, the resort had an "activity" that you could take part in. On Saturday night it was a beach party! It was so fun, they had fire spinners and then dancing in the beach bar with a dance off and all. So we were dancing and the girl with the microphone was calling out different places and getting you to cheer if that was where you were from. There were three of us girls there and we were cheering for Guatemala. So the girl says, hey there are some more friends from Guatemala back there, come up here and dance with these three girls. So these two guys came up, Steph and I were dancing with them. I asked him what he was doing here, for the holiday? He said no, for work. I said, oh so you live here? He said no I'm just here for work. I asked how long he said he arrived that morning and was leaving Tuesday. I said, oh me too. I asked what he did for work and he said he is a pilot!!!! They were our pilots!!! haha. It was too funny. So we hung out with our pilots for the weekend too! They were fun! Then one night was karaoke night. They only had songs in Spanish so a few of us tried them out. Yes I even sang! haha. They had wigs and all for us to wear. Here is our pilot in a different uniform. haha.

The beach bar where we spent most of our time. It started storming on Sunday afternoon and rained all Monday and the rest of our time there, so we spent a lot of time here playing games, cards and hanging out. Dance lessons, games, drinking, so fun!

Even in spite of the storm, we still managed to get a little more beach time. Here is my famous feet on the beach shot! :)

We had five kids in our group of 19, so I had fun being Aunt Kammie for a few days. They were so cute and so fun to watch play and interact with each other. They had a blast playing in the sand.

Playing cards on the beach!

And of course I always enjoy getting to know the locals a little better! :)

Flying back home. We met some other people that were stuck on the island. TACA was not flying any planes out of Roatan when we were scheduled to leave. People were stuck in the airport for a few days. Because we had our own plane and we did not have to make the stops in the places where the visibility was also bad, we were able to wait until the visibility cleared in just our area and then we ran out to our plane and took off! It was only a little bumpy at first for like ten minutes and then we were in the clear the rest of the way to Guatemala.

So on our plane ride home, I really had to use the bathroom. The small plane had no bathroom, just a place in the back where the luggage goes. I knew I wasn't going to make it the hour more that we had in our trip. So I ended up having to have one other lady stand in front of me while I dropped my drawers and filled a cup and a half up with pee in the back of the plane. No shame here. Then I was in another dilemma, what was I going to do with two cups of urine for the rest of the plane ride. No fear, we had a couple empty bottles that I had to dump my pee into. It was quite the experience and I can now say I have peed in the back of a plane. haha. Something to be proud of. Right...... So here I am with my bottle and a half of urine. Never would have guessed that I could pee that much in one sitting. Over 20 ounces. :)