Fun At Barbareta

I just had to share a few more photos with you from our boat trip to Barbareta. Island people are so creative as in using this palm branch as a sail. Seemed to work.

The seas were a bit choppy, so most of us took Dramamine. Debi's after lunch dose made the siesta irresistible.

The tip of Santa Helena.

I asked the name of this lovely little island, and I think I heard "La Marela", but I could be wrong. Whatever the name, it was beautiful.

Yesterday I wrote about Dave swimming to shore with his camera wrapped in a plastic bag held above his head. Here he is preparing to swim back to the boat doing the one-armed crawl. Not an easy task in a strong current.

Barbareta. The dark rocks along the shore are veined with jade. The reef is visible as the gray area in the water with waves breaking over it. The wall is just this side of the reef where we happily snorkeled. I highly recommend this trip.

Boating to Barbareta

Today is Dave and Tracy's 11th anniversary...I took this sweet photo of them at one of the scenic lookout points on the West Bay road.

We all agreed that our very best adventure was the day we drove back out to Paya Bay at the east end of the island and took a boat to Barbareta. Along the way, we boated around several other smaller islands and stopped to snorkel on one of the Pigeon Cays (above). Absolutely fantastic!! Beautiful sea colors from green to turquoise to the deepest blue I've ever seen. Tiny little uninhabited island right on the reef. Nothing compares to snorkeling on top of the reef! We found sand dollars, starfish, beautiful shells, lots of fish. We started out at the far end of the little cay, swimming along through the reef, and the current washed us down to the opposite end where the boat was waiting for us. Great fun.

We had lunch on the boat anchored off the beach at Barbareta. This is a privately owned island - owned by Richard Warren, a Texas billionaire who bought the power company on Roatan and has poured millions of dollars into overhauling and updating RECO. This particular beach on Barbareta is called Jade Beach, and for good reason - the bluffs are streaked with jade, the beach is littered with small pieces of jade, and we've heard that the island roads are paved with jade. We all found lots of jade on the sandy bottom of the water as we swam to shore....after we laughed at Dave, who swam to shore carrying his camera, wrapped in a plastic bag, above his head to keep it dry. Dave doesn't like swimming in salt water and preferred to go ashore and take photos. The boat anchored not far from the wall of the reef. We swam over and snorkeled all along the wall and up on top of the reef. Beautiful coral here - green, purple and yellow sea fans, massive brain coral, elkhorn coral, corky sea fingers, pillars, whips and rods. Lots of yellow and blue fish. Juvenile damsel fish with irridescent blue dots on a dark blue body, some with yellow tails. Reminded me a great deal of snorkeling in Belize.

Deep blue sea.

Going around the tip of Santa Helena. We went between and around Morat, Santa Helena, Rose Cay, and made our way back to Roatan.

A section of the reef with the deeper blue water beyond.

The eastern most tip of Roatan is thick with mangroves. We traveled through a channel in the mangroves from the south side of the island back to the north side.

The coastline is rugged and wild looking on the northeastern end of the island. We passed Camp Bay and returned to Paya Beach. Great trip.

A Week with Dave and Tracy

We tried to give Dave and Tracy a real taste of our life here on the island. Sunday, we took them to our church where they met many of our friends and then to Infinity Bay for a birthday party/anniversary party with many of these same friends. Our friend, Luce Maria, has a birthday on our anniversary and we both had kids visiting, so a party seemed like a good idea. It was, too.

We had the barbeque lunch on the beach. Dave and Tracy skipped the meats, of course, but had plenty to eat. Luce had a yummy birthday cake. Infinity Bay always has music for the barbeques, sometimes a band, sometimes, like this day, just one guy who sang and played a keyboard/synthesizer. He was very good, played lots or reggae and our friend, Esmerelda (not the hummingbird!!) got up and sang several songs with him. She's very good, too. There was even a little "dancing". He also played and sang "Happy Birthday" to Luce and then played a song for us for our anniversary. Nice.

I was glad our friends got to meet our kids and they got to know each other a little. Colin and Kellie were there, too, and they've heard a lot about Kellie and her wild cat, Moe, so it was nice to finally meet.

After lunch, we snorkeled by the rocks at the far end of Tabyana Beach while Dave strolled around taking pictures.

Tracy and Dave walked the length of the beach. May is a very slow tourist month, so there weren't many people out on the beach. It was a hot day and the water felt great.

I took this on an early morning walk along our beach in Sandy Bay. They got to see a variety of beaches while here, and they really liked our beach even though it doesn't have the gorgeous white sand. It is not touristy, and they found that very appealing. Me too!

Our friend, Debi, joined us for an outing to Carambola Botanical Garden. She and Dave, both avid photographers, traded lenses and she tried out Dave's filters. They have the same basic camera. She had forgotten to put her memory card back in her camera but that was not a problem, Dave was happy to lend her one of his. He always carries several.

We took a sweaty hike up Carambola Mountain during which Don and I both picked up a tiny tick. Nothing like a little souvenir!

We found this magnificent spider hanging on a huge web in the garden. Really cool, huh?

One of the garden paths. Tracy, our ecologist, really liked this rather natural style garden. I knew she would.

A First Visit

Tracy

We have had a great week, despite the big earthquake at least two smaller quakes and many aftershocks, up to 300 of them, I've read. Thankfully, we haven't felt most of those, but some of them have been strong enough to detect. Here on the island, life is back to normal for most of us. Dave and Tracy arrived the morning of the big quake and it's been non-stop fun ever since - too much fun to allow time to blog. So I'll try to catch you up on the happenings of the week and share some of the photos I took of our adventures.

The baby hummingbirds have both left the nest this week. Dave and Tracy (who is a scientist) were thrilled to be able to watch them learn to fly. Dave is an avid photographer and took many, many photos of the hummers. Thanks to my pal, Debi, Dave learned a few tricks about photographing hummers and took some outstanding shots. I think he'll share those with us when he returns home. We were hoping the babies would return to the nest a few times before flying off on their own, but they have not. The first born, Chrissy, flew solo early Tuesday morning, and we haven't seen her since. She looked very strong and confident. The second one, Caribbean, was definitely weaker and needed lots of coaxing and poking by her mom before she finally made that first flight late Wednesday afternoon. She flew up onto our roof and mom had to come encourage her several times before she was brave enough to soar away. We haven't seen her again either. Debi gave me a hummingbird feeder and said the babies might very well return with this enticement, so I've hung it up. The mama, Esmerelda, has been back to check the nest several times a day, so perhaps she expected them to return as well.

I took several short videos of the babies stretching and testing their wings, but so far have not had any luck uploading any to my blog. If any of you have suggestions, I'm all ears.

We also celebrated our 37th anniversary this week and Dave and Tracy's 11th. More on that later. We took the kids to the airport this morning and sadly said goodbye, reluctant to see them go. Now we're really empty nesters again.

Ok, Tracy and Dave looked relaxed....but Don....?

Dave is getting it - siesta time.

A visit to the east end of the island. Tracy liked this a lot.

A visit to the Garifuna cultural center in Punta Gorda. I took some fun video of the dancers reinacting some of their history.

We traveled to Paya Bay near the east end of the island. Beautiful spot, nice lunch, many photos shot.

It was cooler and clearer on the east end. We've been hot and hazy for days. Dave did not get any good sunset photos this week. But Paya Bay and other excursions made up for that, I think.

Earthquake followup

We continue to have aftershocks; just after we went to bed last night, I felt some mild shaking three times, one lasting several seconds. People living on the beach reported almost hourly aftershocks felt Thursday, with the strongest one late in the day actually being a 4.8 earthquake.
We felt some of those up on the hill.

The USGS site gave this summary of the quakes (times are UTC, not local):

	MAG	UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s	LAT deg	LON deg	DEPTH km	Region
MAP	4.6	2009/05/29 12:51:03	15.359	-86.463	10.0	HONDURAS
MAP	4.5	2009/05/29 02:45:44	16.118	-87.591	10.0	OFFSHORE HONDURAS
MAP	4.8	2009/05/28 09:06:25	16.353	-87.377	10.0	OFFSHORE HONDURAS
MAP	7.3	2009/05/28 08:24:45	16.730	-86.209	10.0	OFFSHORE HONDURAS

As we've been out talking with people, checking on friends, we've come to realize just how blessed we are to be up on our hill. Many people in our northwest area of the island, Sandy Bay, had problems, especially on the beach. Our friends Colin, Kellie and Moe, just moved to the beach a month ago. Their home suffered cracked walls, tiles, pieces falling from the ceiling, lots of breakage. Their neighbor and landlord incurred even more damage (identical concrete houses) with cracked plumbing, grout popping out of tiles. Our friends, Bob and Debi, just down the beach from Colin, found nearly everything in their kitchen broken on the floor. One of the shop owners told me about her "500 lb. television" falling off the wall [cabinet] onto the floor and not breaking. She said lots of glasses tumbled out of cabinets, but only a few broke. It seems like many of the restaurants and souvenir shops in West End came through it just fine.

Some of our friends were diving during one of the smaller quakes and felt it as an underwater "boom". Don and many others recall hearing the ocean roar during and right after the quakes. I guess I was too terrified to even register that sound among all the other noises.

We know from reading online reports that the mainland had several deaths, even more injuries, a few houses (poorly constructed) and one bridge collapsing. Just read that up in one of the mountainous areas about 100 mud brick homes collapsed and several churches of similar construction were also destroyed.

We are taking Dave and Tracy, who arrived safely at noon on Thursday, out to the east end of the island today. Our friend, Debi, is coming along as a "tour guide" to show Dave the best scenic shots. They are both avid photographers. Tracy, an ecologist, is anxious to see the mostly undeveloped side of the island. It's been very hot and rather hazy here. I'm hoping it clears off as we head east.

Still feeling blessed on Roatan....

Whole lot of shaking....

Most of you have heard by now that we had a 7.1 magnitude earthquake at 2:30 a.m. today. It was incredible. I had just woken from a very deep REM sleep, perhaps sensing something, lay awake listening but heard nothing amiss. Used the bathroom, snuggled back down into bed, when suddenly the quake hit, shaking us like nothing we've ever experienced. The bed was shaking and moving, the floor was moving, everything was rattling and bouncing, and we were terrified. The power went out immediately. Total darkness. Once we realized that it was an earthquake, Don said "we've got to get out of here". We scrambled around, Don found his keys to our gate, and we ran out and up onto the road.

We could hear people off in the distance, down the hill, down on the beach, all hollering and crying out, some quite hysterical. Soon we saw car headlights, people leaving beachfront homes, heading for higher ground, fearful of a tsunami. That never even crossed our minds, never having experienced an earthquake while also on an island, but Don said later that we were too close to the epicenter to have any tsunami effect here. We didn't know how close that was, but it sure felt like it was right under our house. In fact, it was 27 miles away - close enough.

Dennis and Merlin called to see if we were ok....we were and so were they. We heard our neighbors, Chuck and Tia, driving down to their church and missionary inn near the beach, checking on people and bringing some of them back up to their house on the hill above us. Dennis and Merlin's kids, who live down the hill from us, came up the hill, also fearing a tsunami. Lots of people were sitting outside, talking and waiting to see if it was all over. Not much sleep afterwards.

The sky was completely clear; I've never seen so many stars before, including the Milky Way, which we seldom can see in our urban home in the States. I checked the hummingbird nest to make sure the babies hadn't been blown out, and they were ok. We found our oil lamp, lit it and went around the house, checking for damage. My lamp and a glass of water had tumbled off my bedside table. A couple of pictures fell off a wall and table. The fire extinguisher fell over (and thankfully didn't not discharge all over). Nothing fell out of cabinets or off shelves. Amazing. A few cans fell over inside the cabinets but nothing broke. Our house doesn't appear to have sustained any structural damage. About three hours later, the power came back on - that really surprised us. Dennis came by to say the pump to the well had not come back on, so be sparing in our use of water. He also said they had been getting phone calls from people in Canada and the States and it was worldwide news already. I immediately sent out e-mails saying we were ok, then called my parents, fearing that my dad would have heard and be worried. My dad doesn't do e-mail, and I knew my mother would still be sleeping. Thankfully, my cell phone worked and I was able to let them know we were fine. A short time later, the water pump sprang to life, and we have plenty of water again.

We are feeling very blessed today and hopeful that Dave and Tracy's flight arrives on schedule. Too bad they missed all the excitement though.

Baby Hummers

The babies are not only hungry, they're hot! They are growing and beginning to get real feathers, so it's getting crowded in the nest. That's ok at night when it cools off, but we've had a few really hot (90-95 degrees) days in a row, making it pretty warm in the nest. I'm betting they'll be happy to be outta there.

With this abnormally hot weather, we've had to resort to the "get-it-done-early-or-forget-it" schedule. And the frequent power outages don't help. We've now gone almost 36 hours without an outage - I hesitate to say that because when Don does that, the power immediately goes out. And it is pretty miserable to not have the fans running. After a couple of days or partial days with very little breeze and high humidity, we're enjoying nice breezes and lower humidity today, so my laundry is drying quickly.

We've been busy getting the house cleaned, laundry done, groceries bought,and yard work being done by Julio, all in preparation for our son and daughter-in-law's arrival tomorrow - their first visit to Roatan. We're really hoping it will cool off for their week here; they're not used to temperatures like this in Wisconsin. We've been making plans for all the places we want to take them, our favorite restaurants, sailing at sunset, snorkeling, and exploring areas that we hope will interest both the ecologist and the photographer. And lots of card games. Can't wait!