Mike in the Wild

The highlight of my 2023 Western Caribbean cruise was the stop on the island of Roatan, Honduras's ultra-popular vacation spot.  The beautiful reef off West Bay Beach rewarded me with some of the best snorkeling of the entire trip. When I returned earlier this month on a similar cruise there was no doubt I'd head back to the site for another chance to witness the same underwater beauty.  Rather than rent a car like last year, I opted for the cruise port's $25 package tour that was not only cheaper than a taxi but included a short stop first at West End, a picturesque fishing village on the western side of Roatan.  The tour also guaranteed almost two hours at West Bay Beach, my real interest. However the tour's name was a misnomer, Hop-On Hop-Off, as it was definitely not a flexible mode of transportation, where you had the freedom to get on and get off buses at frequent stops.  Instead, passengers were obliged to start the trip in Mahogany Bay at a set time on a...

Leaving the comfort of a 3,500-passenger cruise ship after two full days at sea can induce a unique anxiety in most passengers.  If you're planning a long day away from the all-you-can eat buffet, ports of call throughout the Caribbean usually forbid visitors to bring any food ashore.  Fortunately, most ports like Cozumel or Belize have plenty of restaurants that are more than happy to sell margaritas and conch fritters as a supplement to the ship's fare.  And lucky for me, the six-hour tour I booked to the Mayan archaeological site of Kohunlich from the Regal Princess during its stop in Mahahual provided a small snack bag. Of course, touring Kohunlich wasn't about the food, it was about the history of the Mayans, the local indigenous population whose civilization dates back more than two thousand years.  The site in Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico was already settled by 200 B.C. and was abandoned almost a thousand years ago after an elaborate array o...