A quick hop into Honduras

Worrying that we have only a couple of weeks left to pass through Honduras, Belize and Mexico to Cancún, where we have a flight booked home, we did some serious prioritisation and made a flight from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to the Bay Islands off the Caribbean coast from where we would work our way along towards Mexico and were eagerly anticipating some fantastic scuba diving.

Roátan is the larger of the Bay Islands and away from the mainland the culture is distinctly more Caribbean. Many locals are Garifuna rather than latino and their own language is spoken as much as Spanish and English. The west end of the island is the main spot for tourists and many colourful houses, shops and restaurants are packed tastefully along a white sand beach. Although the diving is said to be the cheapest in the world, Leila had to be strict to prevent Ali from blowing the budget. We checked into Casa del Sol, which provided us a comfortable room with kitchenette in a nice garden and just around the corner from the main street.

The island is packed with dive shops and we had to try a few before eventually finding Sun Divers to be the most helpful and professional. We made a few dives and it was pretty fantastic - we explored a wreck as well as some reef walls and canyons with many swim throughs and small caves. The visibility was incredible, the coral healthy and we saw many lobsters, and some very bold eels that followed Leila around, as well as turtles, lots of fish and some unusual small things like the lettuce slug and fireworm.

For our last day in Roatán, Leila found a nearby resort hotel with a big pool that we relaxed at, however the highlight for Ali was his sweetest taxi bargaining victory yet. The lazy taxi driver mob in this resort thought they could demand $12 for a 5km drive home and the front man wouldn't budge. Not realising that this tourist would take the steep hour long walk on principle, we began hiking and sure enough the more junior of the group caught us up a few minutes later and took our offer of $6. This more friendly taxi driver learned a valuable lesson in business as he was rewarded with our $20 airport run the next morning, which he was delighted with, even though it was at 4am.