Honduras & Home

HONDURAS:

The last port on the itinerary, after traversing the Panama Canal, has been up in the air for quite a while. Originally, the final destination was Cuba, but unfortunately, some of the passengers were not cleared so the entire ship had to reroute. The second plan was to go to Guatemala, but was cancelled because of safety concerns. Finally, Honduras was settled on, and specifically, the island off of the mainland called Roatan.

With only two days and one night to spend on Roatan, the overall feeling was to not plan much and concentrate on spending time with the friends we have made. I got off the ship with seven others and we made our way to West Bay, an area of the island that is known for nice hotels, beautiful beaches, shopping, and bars. We immediately booked a villa at Infiniti Resort & Spa (one room with one bed and a pull out couch for eight people was standard by now). After changing and relaxing for a little while in the villa, we went to the beach and found that almost everyone else had had the same idea. The entirety of Semester at Sea had apparently chosen the same stretch of beach to inhabit and we were clearly taking over. I even ended up having a beer with my International Management teacher. There was a huge infinity pool (hence, the name of the hotel) with a swim up bar that dropped off only a few yards away from the clear blue ocean. It was perfect and exactly what we wanted. The beach was lined with hotels that different friend groups were staying in so we spent the day swimming in the ocean and pool and going bar to bar at all of the hotels. It poured the entire day so there wasn’t an instant that we weren’t sopping wet. Since we were in the water most of the time anyways, it didn’t matter much, but it probably would have been a very different day if the weather had been nice. I met a woman from Utah who had recently moved to Roatan who was currently bottle nursing a baby monkey. His name was Little Man and I was infatuated with the little thing. She was very protective but we were all holding him by the end of the day. Afterwards, we showered and got ready in the room before heading to dinner on the West End. We went to a Mexican restaurant and had incredible nachos and fajitas. The streets on West End were under construction and very tough to get to. Everyone kept telling us how different West End was because of this but we ended up finding a section that was a little better off and that had a few bars and clubs. We stayed out for most of the night and then came back to the hotel. Our room ended up being a melting pot of incredibly random characters that were not originally staying there- it was filled to the rim with bodies. The balcony was our self-made drunk tank and a random dog (who was in fact the hotel managers’) ended up cuddling up next to our friend Mike for the whole night. Some of us stayed up and laughed until it was 7am and the villa next to us was cooking breakfast. It was the perfect last night in port.

The next day was pretty slow moving because of the night before. After a solid two hours of sleep, we walked into town in the pouring rain to get some breakfast and souvenirs. We walked back, cleaned up the room, and hung out at the hotel bar for the rest of the day, joking around with the bartenders that had strangely become close friends in the past 24 hours. We caught a cab back to the ship about three hours before we needed to be back, which was perfect because right outside of the ship was a restaurant filled with SASers. There were hundreds of us and we ended up taking over- the best last hurrah I’ve ever seen. It was 4 pm in a Mexican restaurant but there were college students dancing on tables, singing, and yelling more than I had ever seen at any frat party.

HOME:

Landing in Port Lauderdale was extremely bittersweet. I was glad to be home and feel settled for the first time in almost four months but it was also hard to say goodbye to the people and the experience as a whole. My mom and Homie met me in Florida, which was great, and we spent a day and a half there before catching a flight to California. Most of my close friends on the ship left immediately that day or headed straight to Miami to go out that night so I didn’t see many once getting off the ship. We did have dinner with Colleen and her dad, which was extremely entertaining because he is the male form of her and funny as ever.

Some people were and are still worried about readjusting after the time that we just spent. Some friends were dreading returning home because, honestly, it was the time of our lives and home, as pretentious as it sounds, is relatively quite boring. I’m okay with coming home because as much as I love travelling and as much as I loved SAS, I’m ready to feel settled again. I’ve been in Newport for a little over a week now, visiting friends and family, and preparing for Christmas. I’m ready to get back to school but enjoying the down time. I’m currently planning two trips for next quarter- one to Denver and one to UCLA to visit friends (from SAS and from before), but the most exciting update is that I’ve been researching and applying for internships this summer. The locations that I’ve narrowed in on are Sydney, Dublin, and London. Looks like the travel bug isn’t as easy to shake as Dengue! Stay tuned!