As soon as I booked this cruise, I knew that I wanted to find a tour for one of our ports where I could hold a sloth.  I have been obsessed with sloths for years, and holding one would be a bucket list experience for me.  There are several monkey and sloth habitats on Roatan, so this seemed like a good day to do that.  Another priority for today’s tour was to spend some time snorkeling from the shore at West Bay beach.  My research told me that they have an incredible reef which is easily accessed from the shore, and photos of the beach itself looked beautiful so I knew I wanted to see it for myself.  The next step was picking a tour company, and Roatan has lots of options for small group tours where they will fill a van with 15ish people and take you to play with the monkeys and sloths, to go shopping somewhere on the island, and to end the day at the beach.  I considered doing that, but since holding a sloth was such a huge priority for me, I didn’t want to risk taking a group tour and possibly missing that stop.  Some of the places those tours take you to have specific hours when you can hold the sloths, and I did not want to risk something delaying my tour so that we arrived at the wrong time and could not hold a sloth. 

That’s when I came across Rony’s Tours.  They offer lots of varieties of tours, but the one I liked the best was the private tour option.  For a little bit of extra money above the cost of a group tour, DH and I could have our own driver and guide for the day in our own air conditioned car.  We could pick and choose where we went, how much time we spent at each place, and in what order we made the stops.  The website has a list of all the different places you can go and how much each place will cost, so it was very easy to pick out our schedule for the day.  They were quick to reply to my emails and answering all of my questions, and they did not require any payment in advance (always a plus because then you don’t need to deal with getting a refund if the ship misses the port for some reason!).

Today’s Fun Times

These papers were included with our Fun Times today:

My alarm clock went off bright an early at 7am.  I jumped out of bed, eager to get this exciting day started!  Peeking out the window at 7:30, it looked like we were already tied up to the dock.

Once we were both dressed and with our beach bags packed, we went upstairs to Lido for breakfast.  We had good timing because there were only two or three people on line at Blue Iguana, so it didn’t take long to get our breakfast burritos.

Breakfast with a view!

Like a kid in a candy store, when I finished my burrito, I left DH sitting at the table and sipping his coffee so I could go take photos of the port from the outside decks upstairs.  It was shaping up to be another sunny, beautiful day in the Caribbean!

The Carnival Freedom was in port with us today

At 8am, Gary announced that the ship was cleared so I went back to get DH so we could head out.  The morning sun would have put our faces in shadow, so I told DH we should skip this photo op and wait until later this afternoon, when hopefully the sun would be at a better spot in the sky for a souvenir photo.

Mahogany Bay is another highly commercialized cruise port, which means lots of walking to get from the gangway out to where the private tours can pick you up.  Luckily, it was a little less confusing today compared to Costa Maya yesterday, and soon enough, we found our way up the hill, across a big parking lot, up and down another hill, and out to the sea of tour providers waiting to pick up their passengers.  Someone approached me to ask which company I was looking for, and when I said Rony’s Tours, he pointed me three people down from him.  When I got there, they greeted me by name and said they were my driver and guide.  How did they know it was me without me saying anything??  I wonder if that meant no one else from either ship booked with Rony’s Tours today?  Or maybe the group tour had a different meeting time/location?  Either way, it was nice to find our guides and not need to negotiate that mess of vendors any longer!

Our guide for our day in Roatan was named Windell, and our driver was Darson.  Windell explained that he would come inside all the stops with us while Darson stayed with the car all day.  It was now 8:30am, and we drove off towards our first stop as Windell explained some of the history and culture of Roatan.  He is a high school English teacher but in their schools, students don’t take every subject every day, so he doesn’t have to teach on Wednesdays and is free to guide cruise ship tours.  In addition to those two jobs, he also attends college for a degree in English, so he’s a busy guy!  With all of that English background, it was no surprise that his speech was easy for us to understand and he was completely fluent.  He joked that his English was better than his Spanish!

After about 20 minutes, we arrived at our first stop at a scenic overlook.  There were a few vendors selling crafts and souvenirs, and behind that was a view of Coxen Hole.  I found it a little strange that Windell took us here since our ship was docked at the other cruise port in Mahogany Bay.  It was a pretty view, but it would have been more fun to see our ship instead of the RCCL ship which happened to be docked over here today.  Maybe there is no equivalent view over Mahogany Bay?  I’m not sure, but this place seemed pretty popular with tour buses and there were probably 50 other tourists up here at the same time as us.

We didn’t have any interest in the souvenirs for sale here so we enjoyed the view for a few minutes, then got back in the car to drive to our next stop: Manawakie Eco Park.  Rony’s Tours offers two places to play with the sloths and monkeys.  Daniel Johnson’s costs $10 per person and is a very popular choice among cruise ship passengers, whereas Manawakie costs $15 per person and has only been opened for a few months so it is not as well known just yet, and it is located closer to West Bay (Daniel Johnson’s was actually in the opposite direction and would have involved a much longer drive).  There were only a handful of reviews on Trip Advisor for Manawakie, and even fewer on Cruise Critic, but all of those reviews were excellent and said it was not crowded and they had lots of time to play with the sloths and monkeys.  I thought Manawakie sounded like a better option for our needs, and it was worth the extra $5 per person cost.

We arrived at Manawakie at 9:15am and we were the only ones there!  They have their own guides there so Windell did not go in with us, but he showed us where to pay our entrance fee and made sure we were set up with our guide, Hector.  Although we were eager to play with the sloth, Hector had a route planned out for us.  First, he walked us through their garden and explained how the locals use the various plants and herbs for home remedies and medicinal purposes. 

We could tell that he really knew his information well, but honestly, his accent was so thick that we could barely understand him.  He spoke very fast and his speech sounded like he memorized a script so it didn’t hold our attention as much as it should have.  They have a display set up with around 10 different jars and containers, and he opened each one to tell us what was inside and how it was used.  Maybe we would have enjoyed it more had he taken us there at the end of the tour, instead of at the beginning when all we really wanted to do was play with the animals? 

After about 20 minutes, we reached the area where they keep the capuchin monkeys. Hector explained that the monkeys are not shy and will jump all over us, climb inside our clothing, and try to take anything hiding in our pockets.  We purposely left everything in the car aside from our sunglasses and my camera, and DH made sure to empty his pockets except for the one with a zipper closure where he kept his wallet.  Within seconds of us entering the cage, this happened…

This monkey was named Poncho and he was 3 years old.  He really loved climbing all over DH and he kept going up onto his shoulders, then down his shirt!  It was crazy but so funny at the same time!  Poncho was really a handful, but I was more drawn to the other 2 monkeys.  One was a tiny 6 month old baby, but he spent the whole time up in the rafters, too afraid of humans to come down and say hello.

The third monkey was 1 year old and he was just perfect for me… too shy to jump all over me, but friendly enough to let me feed him and pet him. 

Hector gave us sunflower seeds to feed the monkeys, and they would take it from our hands, split it open, and eat the seeds.

I think Poncho saw me feeding the 1 year old (I wish I could remember his name!), so he came over to get some food too.

It didn’t take long before this happened…

He was a fast-moving critter!  We had a lot of fun playing with the monkeys, and it felt like we were in there a long time, but I just looked at the time stamp on my photos and we were only in there for about 10 minutes.  I guess it was such a frantic experience that it felt way longer than it actually was!  When we were ready to leave, Hector put Poncho up in his tire swing with some sunflower seeds to keep him distracted so we could open the gate and quickly jump out without Poncho escaping.

The next two cages housed a rabbit and a few parrots, but we weren’t allowed to play with those animals for whatever reason.

We knew all that was left was to play with the sloth, but Hector wanted to share more of the history of Roatan first.  He took us into this little hut with murals painted on all the walls.  Luckily it was air conditioned in there so at least it was comfortable, but the acoustics were not the best, and between the echoing, the noise of the air conditioner, and Hector’s thick accent, we only understood about 30% of what he was saying.  He gets credit for trying, at least!

This is Hector

A nice map of the island

At first we thought this said Prophet Joe Biden and we started to laugh.  We tried explaining what we thought was so funny, but Hector had never heard of Joe Biden.  He did know who Barak Obama was, so we were able to explain Biden’s role to him.  It’s always interesting to me to learn what people from other countries do and do not know about America and our politics.

And with that, it was finally time for the grand finale… the sloths!  The problem was, there was another group already in there!  How did that happen??  We were the only ones here when we arrived, so how did they get ahead of us?  As we were waiting off to the side, this deer came up behind us on the other side of the fence.

They have 4 sloths at Manawakie Eco Park… one male, one female who just had a baby, and one other female who is pregnant.  So maybe I should say they have 4.5 sloths? Hehe  The male sloth is the father of both babies, so they named him Real Deal, and he was the sloth we were allowed to play with.  No one will be allowed to hold the baby sloth until it is 1 year old, and the two female sloths were up in the trees while we were here so we couldn’t hold them.

If you look really closely, you can see one of the females with her baby up in this tree…

Fernando is the sloth keeper and he introduced all the sloths and taught us how to safely hold Real Deal so we wouldn’t hurt him and so he wouldn’t hurt us.  His nails are very sharp, and if he doesn’t feel like we are holding him securely, then he will dig into us with his nails for a better grip.  To avoid that, we had to cup one hand under his bottom so he could sit on that hand and then he would just drape over our shoulders.

OMG! I am holding a sloth!!!

Sloths can turn their heads around 180 degrees, perhaps because that requires less energy than turning their whole body?

He was so cute and cuddly!

DH’s turn to hold Real Deal.  BTW, only the males have that marking stripe on their backs (I had always wondered about that!)

My bucket list officially has one more check mark!  In the end, we spent 45 minutes here and I think that was the perfect amount of time.  Had we come with a bigger group, we may have needed more time so everyone had a turn with each of the animals, but 45 minutes was perfect for just the two of us.  Windell and Darson were waiting for us at the front entrance, and as we drove away at 10am, a big 15 person van pulled up so I was glad we arrived so early. 

We drove for about 20 minutes to our next stop at the Mayak Chocolate Factory.  I saw it listed as one of the free stops on the Rony Tours website and mentioned it Windell that we were interested in making a brief stop there if it was on our way.  Conveniently, it was about midway between Manawakie and West Bay so it made for a good place to stop.

The store was quite small, so luckily we were the only people inside at that time.  Had we come with a bigger tour group, I imagine it would feel pretty crowded!  One of the employees came over to explain how to harvest the beans and make chocolate.

The lady gave us samples of a few kinds of chocolate, including white chocolate, milk chocolate, 60% and 80% dark chocolate, and chili chocolate.  Luckily DH tried the chili chocolate first because he said it really had a strong kick to it, and there is no way I would have liked it so I skipped that one.  It was an interesting stop and the chocolate was tasty so I’m glad we took the time to visit their factory.  We stayed there for less than 10 minutes, then piled back in the car to go to the beach.  There was a lot of traffic backed up on the one lane road because there was construction going on to pave the road.  This is the main road that leads to West Bay and Darson said it used to be very bumpy before they repaved it, so luckily the construction was nearly done and the road was smooth for us.  The problem was that only one direction of traffic can pass at a time so we were backed up from letting traffic pass in the other direction.  Once it was our side’s turn to go, it only took a few more minutes to arrive at West Bay beach.  Rony’s lists all the options for the different beach clubs along West Bay, and we picked Bananarama. 

Bananarama charges $10 per person for a day pass, which includes a lounge chair and bathroom access.  There was no need for an umbrella because the beach is lined with trees for natural shade, and we could rent a locker for $5 (plus a $5 refundable deposit).

Today’s menu

Pizzarama, where we intended to order a pizza for lunch but then ended up not getting hungry so we skipped it

Pizza menu

Lots of picnic tables in the shade and a large bar area

Some live music, but you could only hear it in the bar area

We walked down to the beach to pick out our lounge chairs.  There were plenty available even though we didn’t arrive until 11am

This beach was really beautiful

We told Windell that we were going to go snorkeling, so he offered to walk us down to the far end of the beach to show us where there was a break in the reef that we could use as an entrance area.  I read a few posts online before the trip which explained where to go for the best snorkeling, but it’s so hard to find the right spot when you are standing on the beach.  We were glad that Windell knew where to go, and he walked us all the way down to the far left side of the beach to the Grand Roatan Resort to point out these rocks in the water, which is where he said we should enter for snorkeling.

We didn’t realize he was taking us so far down the beach or we would have brought our snorkel gear with us!  Now we had to walk all the way back to Bananarama to get our snorkels, and then walk all the way back down here again to get in the water.  It would have made more sense if he told us to gear up first before we walked over there.  Oh well, it was a beautiful day for a long walk along the beach.

Once we got back to Bananarama, DH decided he wanted a beer before snorkeling.  We had asked Windell earlier this morning what the beach bars charged for a bottle of beer and he said $2.  We thought that was fair and opted not to stop at a market to pick up beers prior to arriving at the beach.  DH went up to the bar and was surprised that they charged $3.50 per bottle, nearly double what Windell told us.  We found Windell and told him about it, and he was really surprised but said he knew where we could find cheaper beer.  He led us out towards the parking lot for the beach where there were a few stores and restaurants.  One of the stores sold us a 6 pack of local beer for $9, so $1.50 per bottle.  Now that’s more like it! 

While DH enjoyed his first bottle, I rented a locker so we could store our valuables when we were snorkeling, and since the lockers were in the shade, we stashed our beer in there too haha

Finally, it was time to go snorkeling!  We walked back down to the end of the beach and started to see coral just a few feet from the shore. 

Brain Coral

There were lots of Parrot Fish

All of a sudden, this huge school of Blue Tangs surrounded us.  It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced when snorkeling.  There were hundreds of them!

Sharptail Eel

The reef here lived up to all the hype and it was definitely some of the best snorkeling we’ve done in the Caribbean, but I’m honestly not sure that we entered the reef at the right spot.  There were a lot of places where the coral was very close to the surface and it was hard to swim without touching it.  I am actually shocked that neither of got scraped up from the coral!  Now that I’m at home and have a better understanding of the beach, I just pulled up West Bay on Google Maps.  Looking at the satellite view, I can see a channel in front of the Infinity Bay Resort which may have been a better place to enter the water.  I just assumed Windell knew where to send us, but now I’m not so sure that was the best place.  The snorkeling was great, but I know we didn’t make it out as far as I wanted to (where the boat tours were anchored) because we just couldn’t find a safe path to get there with all the coral.  We both started panicking out there and didn’t want to get injured, so we stopped after 30 minutes.  I wish I had asked around while I was at the beach and found another recommendation of a good safe place to swim, but oh well, you live, you learn!

After we walked back along the beach to Bananarama, I put the fisheye attachment lens onto my camera and got back in the water to try to get some cool over/under water shots.  The conditions need to be perfect for these shots to come out, with very calm clear water, and ideally, lots of fish too.  The area of beach in front of Bananarama has fine, soft, white sand, which makes for a beautiful beach but usually there’s nothing exciting to see under the water in those conditions.  At least there was a small boat anchored near the shore so I could try to use that as my focus point.

This was the best one with the boat… too bad there’s no fish or coral or anything worth seeing under the water!

Looking back towards the beach

I took a lot of photos, aiming the lens in different angles, but those were the best of the bunch for today!  By the time I got back to our chairs, DH had retrieved the beers from our locker.

Salva Vida is the local beer in Honduras

Looking straight up from my chair, I saw that the sun was creeping beyond where the palm trees could provide shade.  The beach faces west, so I knew that as the day went on, we would gradually lose our shade, but I was hoping that picking chairs in the back row, up against the wall of the restaurant, that we would keep our shade as long as possible.

Notice how the front row of chairs is partially in the sun?  They were completely in the shade when we first arrived 2 hours ago!

We spent the next hour and a half relaxing on our chairs, enjoying some cold beer, and doing lots of people-watching.  We had originally asked Windell and Darson to pick us up at 3:30pm to have plenty of time to drive back to the port, but by 2:30, we had lost all of our shade and finished all of our beers, so we decided to pack it up an hour early.  Bananarama has a seating area off to the side which is designated for tour guides to have a place to wait while their guests are enjoying the beach, so we knew exactly where to find Windell.  We needed a few minutes to dry off and put all of our stuff away, so he went to find Darson and told us to meet him out in the parking lot when we were ready.  We left the beach around 2:40pm.  This proved to be another advantage of taking a private tour in that we could adjust the schedule however we wanted and we didn’t need to coordinate with anyone else.

As expected, there was a bit of traffic on the drive back, but the time passed quickly as we chatted with Windell, learning more about his life on the island.  We actually got to talk with him about some topics that tour guides usually stay away from (politics and sexual orientation), and he was very open and honest with us.  Windell was a great tour guide and we really enjoyed our day with him.  The drive back to Mahogany Bay took around 45 minutes, and Darson was able to drive into the port area to drop us off a little closer than where we had to meet him this morning.  We thanked them both for a wonderful day in Roatan, and then made our way passed the shops and back towards the ship.

Of course, we needed to stop for a quick photo on the way, now that the sun was at a better angle!

We boarded this ship and went up one quick flight of stairs to our cabin to drop off our bags.  This little guy was waiting to greet us…

We also had a letter in our mailbox with instructions for priority tendering tomorrow in Belize.

We started to regret our decision not to get some pizza at the beach because it was now 4pm and we were starving!  We had yet to try Guy’s Burger Joint, and even though we knew it was dangerously close to our 6pm dinner time, we knew we couldn’t wait 2 more hours to eat.  Luckily, the line was really short at the grill and at the toppings bar, so we were seated at a table and ready to eat in no time.

I love that you can add your own toppings, with as much or as little of each as you like… let’s face it, the toppings are the best part!  In an effort to not completely ruin my appetite for dinner, I left the bun off and only ate the burger and toppings, and I shared my fries with DH. 

After our not-so-light snack, we went back to the cabin to get ready for dinner.  By 5pm, I felt exhausted and needed to lie down for a while to regain some energy.  I guess all that fun in the sun got to me because I was really tired.  We turned on the TV to catch up on the news, and finally gathered up enough energy to go upstairs for dinner right around 6pm.  When we arrived, Prudence’s section was nearly deserted.  All aboard time was at 5:30pm today, so maybe people didn’t have enough time to get ready for the early dining time?  Or maybe they all just wanted to eat at Lido instead?

Tonight’s menu

Roatan Port of Call Menu

None of the entrees appealed to me, and as expected, I wasn’t really hungry anyway, so I just ordered 2 appetizers and that was it.

Cannelloni (this was really good, and had I been more hungry, I may have ordered another one and considered it an entrée sized portion)

Braised Ox Tongue (This was not as good.  I thought I would like it because I love cow’s tongue at the delis back in New York, but this was tough and rubbery and I did not care for the flavor.  For me, this was a rare miss in the Carnival MDR)

I don’t remember what DH ordered, but I think he was also full from his burger and didn’t eat much, and I know for sure that neither of us ordered dessert.

Poor Prudence was very confused as to why we left dinner so early, but we explained that we were exhausted from our day in port and had a very late lunch, so we just weren’t in the mood for a big dinner tonight.  We left the dining room around 6:50pm and realized that it was so early that we could catch the early show for 80’s Pop to the Max in the Encore! Theater.  I was doubtful that I would still be awake for the 9:30pm show, so this worked out really well.  I love 80’s music and I was looking forward to seeing this show, and the thought that I might fall asleep and miss it made me sad, so it’s a good thing that things worked out as they did. 

The doors opened at 7pm and we were able to sit in our favorite seats in the front of the balcony, to the left of the control boards. 

A few minutes before showtime, the dancers came out to warm up the crowd.  Since it is necessary to arrive somewhat early for shows on cruise ships if you want a good seat, I like that Carnival did these pre-shows to give us something to do while we’re waiting.  I mean, I could just scroll through my Thumbs Up feed, but what fun would that be?

I know I was a bit harsh when I shared my thoughts about Motor City, but I was really hopeful that tonight’s show would be better.  Like I said, I love 80’s music.  It’s fun and upbeat, and lends itself to great costumes and dance routines.  The song selection for this show was pretty good, including a mash up of a bunch of one hit wonders which I really enjoyed, but unfortunately, the singing was just not good.  The set for this show uses several giant electronic boards as the back drop, which added lots of opportunities for creativity in the show.  My favorite part was that they had 3 or 4 treadmill bases which they kept moving into different configurations and incorporating into lots of the songs.  That was actually really cool and original!  Unfortunately, if you strip that away, the singing was mediocre at best.  The reason I emphasize this so much is that we heard on Thursday that there were technical difficulties in the late show.  They made it through two songs and then the electronic backdrop boards died.  They tried to fix them but couldn’t figure it out, so the cast brought out some stools and sat on the stage to sing through the rest of the show.  I honestly cannot imagine how miserable that would have been, and I heard some pretty bad reviews from people who witnessed it.  We were extremely grateful that we finished dinner early enough to catch the early show because at least we got to see all the dancing and special effects!

My apologies for the blurry photos… it was the best I could do sitting that far away and without using a flash.

This was for Whitney Houston’s song “I want to dance with somebody”… the dancers were supposed to look like they were dancing with the silhouettes on the screens.  I liked the concept, but not sure that it translated well on such a large scale.

The photos I took of the dancers using the treadmills did not come out well because there was too much movement and the people looked very blurry, but you can see them on the ground at the back of the stage in the next two photos.

The finale song was Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”… kind of an odd choice for a finale considering it’s more of a ballad than an upbeat pop song, but I appreciated that they were trying to share the message of change and bettering yourself.

When the show ended, we grabbed our favorite seats on deck 4 overlooking the lobby to watch Gary host the Decades Music Trivia Party.  This was a lot of fun (perhaps more fun than the show was!).  They played a quick one second clip of a 3 popular songs from each decade (60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s), and we had to yell out if we knew the name of the song.  Then they played a verse or two of each song to see if we were correct.  Several times throughout the game, Gary pulled up people from the audience to do a little something extra like an air guitar contest, or a dance off, or something like that, and he gave out prizes to those winners.  It went on for about 45 minutes and was well attended judging from the people watching from all 3 decks in the atrium.

They shot off streamers at one point… and then had to rush to collect them before they got tangled up in the glass elevator pulleys! Haha

When they played “I Had the Time of my Life” from Dirty Dancing, Gary and one of the guys from the entertainment team reenacted the famous lift.  That was pretty impressive!

After the trivia ended, I realized I was getting hungry.  Of course, that shouldn’t surprise anyone since I barely ate dinner and it was close to 9pm, so 5 hours after our late lunch at Guy’s Burgers.  We went up to the Lido Buffet to see what options were available tonight.  The deli was serving a special grilled cheese sandwich today which sounded really good, with grilled onions, spinach, and muenster and cheddar cheese, so I ordered it.  They did a great job of toasting it this time and I had high hopes… until I took a bite and realized it was covered with mayo!  This really annoyed me because they listed out all of the ingredients on the sign advertising the special sandwich (sorry, I forgot to take a photo) but made no mention of mayo!  Had I known, I would have asked for no mayo since I really dislike mayo.  There was so much of it, and with the gooey cheese, it was impossible to scrape it off.  DH said he would eat some of it, so at least it didn’t totally go to waste.

At least I got lucky because there was no one in like at the pizza place and I had no wait at all for a few slices of the Funghi pizza! 

That was the perfect snack to fill me up enough that I wasn’t hungry anymore, but not so filling that it prevented me from sleeping well.  And with that, we got ready for bed and fell asleep early to recharge for another exciting day tomorrow in Belize!

Step Tracker Daily Total:  8,965 steps; 3.62 miles; 14 flights of stairs