We made it home, but not without some drama . . .
LOOOONG FLIGHT HOME - We're back from Roatan but we originally should have arrived yesterday (Saturday) but didn't get home until today (Sunday). The flight home from Roatan usually is pretty straight-forward: 3+ hours Roatan- Houston, couple of hours layover in Houston to clear Immigration & Customs, 3+ hours back to LAX. Not this time. It turns out that this is the time of the year when on mainland Honduras, they burn some of the sugar cane fields. That smoke then drifts towards Roatan and occasionally closes down the airport. That's what happened on Saturday. ALL of the flights coming in were delayed by about four hours. (Delta canceled theirs all together.) So this meant that we missed our connecting flights in Houston, Dallas, and Denver, and all had to overnight in our respective connection cities and got a re-booked flight for today (Sunday). Everyone made it home OK but what should have been a fairly easy and routine trip home became something of an ordeal, especially because we ended up spending almost 7 hours sitting in the Roatan airport waiting area (check-in 3 hours ahead of time for international flights + the 4-hour delay), which has all of the charm and an old-style hospital waiting room.
BUT WE HAD A NICE TRIP OVERALL - We loved staying at Anthony's Key Resort. This was our third time there with a Reef Seekers group. Since we were last there in 2018, they've done a lot construction, reconstruction, and refurbishing, and it shows. Best of all for those who hated climbing the 60 stairs to the dining area, there's a brand new dining hall - a separate building - at dock level. Rooms are nice -nothing too fancy but quite comfortable and each one of ours had an over-water deck. We also can't say enough nice things about the dive operation overall and our guide, John Carter. There are definitely some issues with reef health due to Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which is prevalent now through most of the Caribbean, but overall a good time was had.
TRIP REPORT & PIX IN THE WORKS - I actually finished the trip report on the plane ride back today and hope to go through the rest of the pictures in the next day or so. I'll send those all to you as a separate e-mail with links. There's also an octopus video and a dolphin video when we stopped our boat mid-ride to snorkel (briefly) with wild dolphins who seemed to be feeding and foraging.
PIX UP ON FACEBOOK - If you're on FB, you can check out the Daily Top 10 pix I posted each dive day of the trip. Look for them on both the Ken Kurtis and the Reef Seekers pages.
THE GANG - Our crew of happy campers the morning we were leaving Roatan (and before we knew of any flight delays). Me, Laurie Powers, Michelle Leonard, Rachel Capoccia, Lisette Lieberman, and Henry Gittler. |
