the fam

Hi,

okay, so the family have arrived WOOO. basically we got ourselves a car...which proved to be difficuly seeing as the blooming rental company didn't have the car there that we had organised. we had to make do with a pickup, our luggage hanging out at the back of the car unprotected. i wanted to sit on the back as a guard but FANCY THAT, the parents said no. mwahaha....

luckily the luggage was fine. we drove to cofradia briefly to pick up my stuff and to speak to ben about the best way of driving to la ceiba, as i didn't know, i'd only ever gone by bus so i couldnt remember the turn offs etc. mum thought it was like an hour to ceiba...oh how wrong, it's like 3.5 hours ahha. so we had to drive through the night. we DID however get the most epic baleadas everrrrr from baleadaladee (baleada lady who makes da neeeeatest ones) for dinner, plus homemade mangojuice. yum.

we drove and finally arrived in ceiba after having to endure a few potholes in the road that literally came out of nowhere. we were going to go for a drive around ceiba to find some accommodation that mum had found, but decided to sack the idea cos we were all shattered. we had to sign into a pure expensive hotel for one night. was definitely a nice experience for me!

the following morning we woke pretty early to stephen telling us we were late. mad dash and we were out of the hotel, for stephen to realise he hadn't accommodated for the daylight saving time, so we were early ahaha. arrived at the galaxy wave ferry terminal, mum and stephen took the car back to the dealer in ceiba. tom and i hung around the ferry port while grandma sat inside. was nice to be able to finally talk to him, we hadn't done much chatting since their arrival.

we took the ferry over and arrived on the island, got a people carrier to our accommodation that mum had organised... an actual appartment/wooden house on the beach of sandy bay! :)

we flooded in, i was checking it out, it looked amazing. John, the man in charge, took us around the rooms. i thought we were all in 2 rooms - there were like 2 double beds in some rooms, a single and a double in others, so i thought we were sharing, but NO. turns out we were all getting our own room, grandma in one, mum and stephen in one, me in one and tom in the other! there was a lovely decking area on the elevated porch of the appartment, and our own kitchen/dining area complete with a bookshelf full of games, books, jigsaws, magazines...! they were obviously used to the realllllly boring days that the island holds. when it rains, for example, the beach isnt much fun, and the bars/clubs are closed most weekdays...so what do you do?! sit in and play monopoly with the family as was the case for me one night. just for the record, we all got totally MASHED by stephen's incredible command of the game. i guess that's what happens when you download the game for your phone and spend every waking minute on it eh? TOUCHE. blub.

so we settled into the island. i took a trip to marlin's hotel, the place i stayed at eastertime...she had let me off paying the cost of my accommodation so that i could get back to my old placement asap, so i made it my priority to shoot down there and give it to her, im sure she never expected to see it again!

aww what a wonderful greeting 'LOOK AT YOUUU, you've lost so much weight!!' guess i was pretty chuffed to hear that ;) she welcomed me with open arms and gave me a piece of her LEGENDARY sweet potato cake. it is to die for.

we chatted and caught up with each other, she was so grateful to see me, she wasn't concerned about the money at all! it was nice to be welcomed back with so much love and smiling happiness, i remembered why i loved Roatan so much... :)

i headed back to sandy bay to be with the family. it feels like a blur now... i see them there, i remember them being in the flesh, standing in the kitchen, on the dock, out at the pier... they really were actually definitely 100% HERE. jeez.

speaking of the dock, we did a fair bit of snorkelling while we were there. it was awesome, i saw some pretty amazing things there, baracudas, parrotfish, starfish, angel and butterfly fish, squirrel fish... it was amazing. saw a fair amount of dory's from finding nemo too ahah.
the snorkelling was amazing though, we got the equipment free with our accommodation, some kayaks too, so stephen and tom did that a couple of times. i snorkelled out with mum, she claimed that i talked to the fish in the water... i actually did, don't ask. we swam through the shallow coral, through tunnels, with schools (i am SURE it is a school of fish, though kevin insists its shoals. i think we're both right), around all the types of marine life. we swam deep into the coral, the water level getting shallower and shallower, until you pop over on shall piece and all of a sudden the greatest expanse of water is infront of you, too far to see more than ten metres of clear blue infront of you... caves of fish and shellfish and anenomies (sp?) and bigger fish swimming around below us, i saw a parrotfish that was literally about half my size. thats a blinking massive fish by the way. i was like WOAH.

we met John before, the guy who kinda manages/owns the place. he owns a bar too, and some other rooms. he liked to drink and was pretty hilarious on certain occassions at the bar ahaha. i THINK it was his wife, Sue, who ran the bar. she was hilarious and great. attended to our eeeevery need, whipping a new salva vida in place of the empty ones before we could even ask her, entertaining us with her funny chat. she was a character, so hard to describe. she seemed to think she knew what she was talking about a lot, but didnt REALLY know, which made her seem kinda cute. she was adorable, a really lovely person to have met on the island. she was great to chat to when you just wanted to chill and have a nice wee laugh :)then there was Angie, who i had met at christmas time up at the oasis pool bar, she spilled my beautiful cocktail all over the floor and gave me 200 lemps to cover it haha. she couldnt remember me of course, she was completely trollied on new years eve :P so she worked a couple of days at the bar, she organised a bingo night with the other people staying in their accommodation, from texas. keen divers they were.

anyhoo, thats the intro. more to come!

love Jen xxx