I felt 100% better this morning and watched the ship come into port. The sunrises are amazing here in Roatan. The position of the port and watching the sun coming up behind the island is nothing short of awesome. We were docked and allowed off the ship by 8am, so I went down there and hailed a taxi to go downtown. Here’s a piece of advice, if someone that’s reading this has the money, open an internet café/coffee shop in Mahogany Bay. The closest café is in Coxen Hole, which isn’t but a $5 cab ride but much easier if you could just walked off the ship.
On the way to the ship I asked the cab driver if any ATMs gave money in USD (serious question) because last time I was here, I couldn’t find one. If you go to the local airport, they have two ATM’s in there, the ATM to your left gives USD but you have to take at least $50 out. I don’t think there was a local service fee either. The ATM at the cruise pier in Mahogany Bay spits out local currency and it gets confusing (to me) because the conversion rate is $90 local to $1 USD. I’m bad at math and I’d wind up draining my account.
Remember: Airport in Roatan has one of the only USD ATM’s on the island.
The internet café was inside a cellular store and was $3 an hour, I stayed for four hours before making the walk downtown. Now a year ago I would have said “I wouldn’t be caught dead walking downtown Coxen Hole” cause it looks like a complete cluster. Mopeds, taxi cabs, and people wandering the streets but after being there a couple times I realize that its nothing but a sleepy little fishing village. Spanish and English are both spoken on Roatan but turns out all the people I spoke to only knew Spanish, including my cab driver. Luckily I had my Google translator app and anytime I had a question, I punched it in and showed them the translation in Spanish (see left). Worked like a champ. 
I walked into a local bar by the cruise pier called Fonzies (named after the owners dog). They had wifi, fresh snapper caught off the coast, and cold drinks. Though they really stuck it to you with the $4 dollar beers ($2 down the road) but it was worth it because they had free wifi. A lot of crew members were there. The owners are from Texas and live here part of the year and back in the states the other part and from what I gathered their daughter runs the place. I decided to head back to the ship a little early and check out the Carnival-built Mahogany Bay with the magical flying beach chairs. For $12 you can get a ride to the beach if you’re too lazy to walk the 1,000’. Fair enough. There was a lot of passengers from Crown Princess around the shopping center.
Departure was delayed because the Crown Princess has us pinned in. All aboard was at 3:30 but that’s not happening, its 4:42pm as I type this and Princess guest’s are still shopping on the pier. The have a Fat Tuesday on the pier that looked cool, the cheapest frozen concoction was $6. I’ve been to the one in New Orleans and Key West; I assume that one is the same. We wound up getting underway at 5:15. They had to pick the pilot up from the Crown Princess and put him on our ship.
The sail away was awesome. The view of the sunset behind the mountains was nothing short of breathtaking (see video below).
Dinner tonight was awesome. They had it all Valentine’d up tonight in the main dining room. They brought roses to all the girls in the dining room, it was a nice touch.
Crashing out early tonight, the waves are rocking the ship pretty good.
Navigational Highlights:
When we leave Roatan we will continue our navigations along the coast by a distance of two miles until we reach the western point of the island. From here we will switch to a north northwest heading at a speed of 18-knots, sailing in the direction of Cozumel.
Video:
Subscribe to our Cruise News Updates.
