January 22, 2026
Mahogany Bay, Roatan Honduras
Weather 80’s, mostly sunny with early light rain, humid
We docked on time at Roatan, Honduras. This is an island about 30 miles off the coast of Honduras. It has an international airport and space for many cruise ships. Mahogany Bay is a private park owned by Princess Cruises, but in recent years, they sold to local folks and now many different lines dock here. A large Princess ship docked right after the Viking Mars tied up. We melded with the throngs exiting that ship as we made our way to the tour meeting point.
We met our tour guide and proceeded to walk the 5 minutes to the bus area. I say busses, but they were really vans. The unit had 4 seats per row and 7 rows with maybe 6” of aisle and a crazy driver. Well, crazy, but safe as he got us to and from sans incident. We landed at Gumbalimba park. This was a small area of second growth forest with nicely paved trails and identified flora. We saw mahogany trees, Teak trees, Cinnamon trees, Allspice trees and even an Iguana in a dead branch of a tree. I liked their motto:
We have to say we were disappointed in the lack of Fauna. No birds, no monkeys, only three cats and a hummingbird that refused to be photographed. We boarded the bus back to town and got the spiel on the way back. One thing we noticed was that there were no traffic lights. This was like Colon in Panama. Traffic somehow worked. Once back in port we picked up presents for Jenny and Hazel and then ate lunch on the ship, chatting with a nice couple from Winnipeg. After lunch we ventured out to the tourist shopping area, but only found some earrings for Shirley.
After that we strolled back to the ship for relaxation. Port talk at 4:30 was good and about Belize. We caught up with Bob and Anna who told us about their day.
The Private Island tour
Bob and Anna were spared the bus but had a nice walk to a pier where a waiting boat took them to (something) key. They visited a rescue animal clinic/shelter/zoo-like place. Bob then got to go snorkeling and saw some of the Great Meso-American Reef, the second longest in the world. He saw pretty coral and tons of fish. He recorded much of it with his new waterproof video camera, but that does not scale well on the blog. We will have to wait until he gets home to edit and share. They made it back to the ship just in time to sail away – in fact they had already rolled up the red carpet in preparation for leaving!
We cast off promptly at 4:45 heading to Belize. Before dinner we walked the promenade deck and saw a beautiful sunset.
Good night!
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