so much paradise

Apologies to those of you who have heard me say this before - several times, even. The Inferno is a much more interesting read than Paradiso. Bliss, light, joy. Repeat. Incredible to experience, but to write about and read about? Boring, after a bit. Why am I bringing up Dante? Because I'm in paradise, and I've run out of new ways to describe beauty, brilliance, light, gorgeousness, etc. Clouds, yay! Reef, yay! White sands and turquoise waters? Yay! Great food.....again.

Still, this is more a diary for me than anything else, so I report. Yesterday morning we took a water taxi to the other popular area of Roatan beaches, West Bay. I really didn't like it at all - it was slick and overly fancy, the people were too beach hip and European -- not that there's anything bad about Europeans -- but there were slim-hipped men in tiny speedos with absolutely no body hair, and brown, thin women in designer bikinis. That's fine, it's just not my crowd. So we saw it, and were newly thrilled with West End and Luna Beach Resort.

Yesterday afternoon we went out on the big boat, to the reef. We puny snorkelers are definitely not as 'cool' as the macho scuba divers. Marc noted that it was condescending the way they went out of their way not to be condescending to us. That made me laugh, it was so true. The boat goes out at daily 9, 11, and 2, to different dive spots along the reef, and snorkelers can tag along if they like. So we liked, at 2.

I do wish I could take underwater pictures so I could remember the actual breathtaking beauty of some of the fish. There were these small ones that were brilliant deep sapphire blue with tiny little spots of light blue - looked like the night sky with stars to me. And yellow ones, and orange ones, and red ones, and frilly ones, and SCHOOLS of them. I laughed at myself once, when I was in the midst of several schools of fish and everywhere I looked were other schools of fish because I thought 'the ocean is full of fish!' Silly me. But really, it was incredible to see. I love the schools of fish the most. When he was snorkeling the day before, Marc saw an 8' long moray eel; he first thought it was a huge log, and then he saw the hideous maw. I'm glad I didn't see that.

So anyway, beauty, joy, brilliance, light, more beauty. Repeat. Yesterday was the most fun day of our whole vacation. We're going out again at 2 today, our last full day here.

Sunsets, courtesy of yesterday:

the Luna Beach pier and dock

from the beach between Luna Beach and West End

And oh!! The stars, the night sky. Living in Manhattan, I forget about the stars since they're never visible. We stop on the beach on our way home after dinner and just stare, point out Orion's belt, watch the amazing Milky Way. If I'd brought my tripod, I'd take a photo but I didn't, too bad.

This morning we walked into West End for breakfast, back to Pura Vida where we had pizza a couple of nights ago. We both ordered the "tipical" breakfast: 2 eggs, cheese, refried beans, and fresh corn tortillas:

And this sign next to Pura Vida made me laugh - cheep rooms:

I accidentally had my camera set at manual shutter, so all the photos I took this morning were blown out since I didn't adjust the shutter speed. Too bad.

So today we'll lounge around until 2, go out for a long snorkel along the reef, then lie in the sun for awhile. Dinner somewhere, we haven't decided yet, but we do know that tomorrow morning we're going to have our last breakfast at Lobster Pot. I just love that place so much; we've eaten three dinners there and one breakfast, and I want it to be the last place we eat. It's run by a mother and three adult daughters, and they are lovely and laugh and serve absolutely delicious food. I'm going to miss that place, a lot.

I don't want to go home.