City Dogs are back on the east side of Roatán. We had to make our way back round to Parrot Tree to finish up a couple of long gestating projects like fixing up the floorboards -- some of them were rotten and needed to be replaced and we couldn't find a matching laminate so we went with the best they had -- which meant we had to change the laminate on the non rotten floorboards for them to match. It ended up being a bigger project than we anticipated (what isn't?) but the final result looks nice, maybe even better than the original?
We've also been working and touring the island checking out the best of what Roatán has to offer -- because what else are City Dogs going to do?
A couple days ago we took a couple of friends from Parrot Tree up to Jonesville Point to the appropriately named Hole in the Wall for some afternoon fun. As a venue that is only accessible by boat, Hole in the Wall is a unique slice of life on Roatán that most people simply miss because either they don't know it's there -- or because they can't get there from the more convenient tourist traps.
Ed, who runs Hole in the Wall -- has started a new tradition -- shooting off a real cannon @ 4:20 every Friday. It's quite the experience. Ed was going to shoot it under our bimini but we decided it might be best to simply move our Beneteau Oceanis 393 forward a bit to get it out of the way.
Andrea literally had a blast killing flies with a compressed air toy shotgun designed to shoot salt. I can only wonder what kind of smile she'd have if she were on a range shooting a real gun...
We also finally made it over to Little French Key (LFK) on land (we've been there with the boat) checking out the facilities of the Subway Watersports team. They've got a big, talented, amazing team over there with a couple of great locations covering both sides of the island -- one just past Parrot Tree on the north side of the island in the Turquoise Bay resort and one right on the water on the south side in LFK.
We dove the Prince Albert wreck and had an absolute blast checking out the big intentionally scuttled cargo ship (which has some gorgeous coral at the bow), the downed DC-3 airplane (which isn't in very good shape and seems to be disintegrating) and the shallow reef wall. We saw three spotted eagle rays swimming just off the wreck together near the peak performance buoyancy hoops.
Andrea spotted a small little spotted eel in the mostly intact Prince Albert Wreck
We got a really nice little video of a gray angelfish.
We also saw a free swimming green moray eel that was a pretty special experience.
But the highlight of the day was before the dive when we were touring the grounds of LFK. They've got a bunch of captive animals but only one was out of their little shaded sleeping huts -- a big bad female lion who only had eyes for Andrea. She was sniffing, wagging her tail, and watching Andrea with a playful gleam in her brown eyes.
You can't really see how big her paws are in the photo, but when that lioness pounced into the fence trying to get Andrea -- we both jumped back. The impact of the big cat was something we could feel and we were both extremely glad we respected the sign that said not to touch the bars or put anything through them.
We've also been down to West Bay to Bananarama for the Roatan Marine Park benefit, which was a great time with good music, drinks, amazing pulled pork BBQ right on the beach.
Finally, just yesterday we broke free from the sargassum which has once again infested the bight at Parrot Tree and went sailing up to Port Royal with a delightful couple and their daughter.
We had a great time snorkeling, saw among other things what looked like a dead eel, then put the sails up and worked our way back down the coastline.
It was another unforgettable day working in paradise.
