We had met a couple from Kelowna and they’ve moved down to West Bay, so we took them on over and decided to stay for a snorkel. On the way to West Bay we saw these cows stuck up in a tree. I assume it was from the heavy rains. Hope they got down safely!

West Bay is really the heart of the tourist district. There are lots of hotels, hostels, and beach homes, with lots of restaurants and shops. Vendors stroll the beach with a variety of products to sell you, ranging from hand carved “Roatan Jade” turtles and other animals, to hammocks, bracelets, massages, henna tattoos, hair braiding…

If you’ve been to Mexico and been on the beach, you have an idea of what the beach vendors are doing on Roatan. We even saw a guy riding a bicycle powered cooler to sell you ice cream! Not an easy thing to ride a big heavy bike through the sandy beaches.

Speaking of bikes – what do you make of this picture? The scooter has tires with NO tread, and the young lady on the back balancing the tank of cooking gas, has no helmet other than a construction hard hat. And of course she was wearing flipflops and shorts just to complete the safety conscious outfit!

The water was absolutely super today. It’s the best it’s been and we know it will continue to get better. The weather has cleared and no rain is forecast for the next week. The stuff we’ve seen! Holy cow.

The reef itself is in very good condition. There are lots of fish, and we saw more pelagics today. There were several big permit fish, and an enormous grouper. There were rainbow parrot fish that were from three to six (!) feet in length.

There are sharks in these waters, but we have not seen any yet. HOWEVER – we did see a remora, the fish that attaches itself to sharks. But this remora was attached to a barjack! Check out the picture closely – the remora is attached mid spine, at the top of the fish.

I uploaded fourteen pictures from today’s adventures, but didn’t reference all of them in the post. Click here to see the full gallery of pictures we’ve uploaded so far.

Here’s a little movie of a mutton snapper – the large silvery fish with a dot on his body. But you’ll also see a coney and a barjack cruise by in the background.