West End

This morning we are off to snorkel from our dock.  It is about 200m to swim across out to the coral from the end of the pier.  You go through a boat channel that is not very busy, but Joey and I both wear bubbles tied to us so we can all be seen.  Neither of us really dive down, so these bubble things work great.  Plus it is easy for Andre to spot where we are.  We had actually seen these bubble things 7 years ago here for the first time, got home, bought some on Amazon and have used them every snorkel trip since.

Since we hadn't been here in 7 years we were a little concerned what shape the coral would be in, we were definitely not disappointed.  Where we snorkel here there are very very few people.  You may see a dive boat or 2 on the out side side of the reef where it is deeper at some point during the day, but it really is pretty much a private spot.  We definitely did not swim the entire reef during our stay, but we did cover a lot.

Since it is not raining and forecast for rain again the rest of the week (how wrong they were), we decide to take a taxi into West End for supper.  We knew we had to go somewhere for 2 nights supper and tonight seemed like a nice night to take a break.  We are about a 15 minutes drive from West End.  Had hoped to look in a few shops, but lots close early.  This place is hopping when cruise ships are in port, but by this time of night there are just a few stragglers like us walking around.  Many many offers to go into restaurants for dinner but we had plans to visit Anthony's Chicken place, we were here 7 years ago and loved it.  We walked around the basically one street of West End then back to Anthony's.  Nancy had fish tacos, which looked really good, the rest of us all ordered medium spice jerk chicken.  Wow, sure glad I ordered medium, you know when you really try to have the food not touch your lips because it is so hot, that is what medium was, I can't imagine what how would have done.

Back to our pickup spot for the taxi, then back to our room for another night of games.  

The pier next to our pier

The famous Puerta Azul Blue door

Lots of conch shells on the way to the reef

 brown seaweed known as peacock's tail and boulder star coral on the bottom left

A large school of Blue Thang

sea chub

Longspine Squirrelfish

mountainous star coral 

A forest of fan coral

redband parrotfish

Atlantic Blue Thang

spot-fin porcupinefish 

Princess Parrotfish

spotfin butterflyfish with a pointy nose

juvenile Atlantic blue tang 

Cool sand dollars here, really bigger than what we see washed up on beaches at home or Maine

Channel marker, we see this guy (Royal Tern)  perched here often, or maybe his brother?

Swimming back to our dock

Drop off spot in West End, wine bottle xmas tree

West End Beach, our first introduction to Roatan many years ago with Joey Liam and Kyle from a cruise

West End Church

Andre managed to not buy another magnet as we already had one of Roatan

Many of the shops were closed

Taxis waiting for tomorrows rides to West Bay

We also ate here at Anthonys Fried chicken 7 years ago, amazing jerk chicken, we could hardly handle the medium heat