Cruising in Paradise

Sometimes I get so busy with life that I forget to look around at my surroundings, but when I do, I truly love what we have. Check out that moon over Roatan. Isn't that great? It was the kind of moon that necessitated a man. Unfortunately, I had to stand there, by myself, breathlessly making a weak attempt at capturing how I felt through my feeble use of a 4 year-old camera.

Roatan was a mystical island to me. It had some amazing greenery and growth all throughout the island. Even the wood fences sprouted branches. Intriguing thought. Intriguing symbolism. According to my tour guide, Elma, Roatan was historically inhabited by people who would service the pirates. The island was later cleared of its inhabitants so that it could no longer aid the pirates in the plundering. I asked Elma if there were any treasure left on the island for me. She promptly replied, "No."

Apparently, the island was later settled by escaped slaves. I commend them for escaping and would like to be an actress in the movie that portrays this successful voyage. I will have to study the actual historical events further to understand what actually happened and somehow acquire a large quantity of hair dye and a good make up artist (I'd better have a small part, since I don't really act and have only been an extra in one full-length movie). I also learned that they celebrate their independence day on September 15th. I propose that in support of Roatan, we all have a party in which we partake of tasty tropical beverages on this day, such as a pina colada or perhaps an orange Fanta.



Back to the romanticism of Roatan. I loved the white sand on the beach we visited. The beach folk were really pretty cool. One of the young men from whom I tried to purchase a hat (it was his hat, so he wouldn't give it to me) actually felt bad for me. It may have been my recently sunburned flesh and large protruding purplish ankle and limp that tugged on his pitying heart. All I know is that Roatan does something to your heart. There was definitely something different about the island that I couldn't pinpoint. Something like ... charity. Or it could be that I've always loved the songlike accent of the Honduranian people. Or it could be that I felt like I could quit my job, move to Roatan, be extremely poor but perfectly happy just enjoying the scenery there. That is how beautiful it was to me. I forgot about reality and imagined a cool history of pirates, like Will Turner (hee hee), of slaves that would not be fenced in but be free, and of a peaceful life away from the things of man, except when I would go treasure hunting in my spare time (there just HAS to be treasure there still).