Trip planning & preparations - Oct 15, 2008

Trip preparations started early for this vacation. We decided that we would stay away from the 'big resort' vacations of the past few years and opt instead for something smaller. Internet search turned up the island of Roatan, part of the country of Honduras. It's just off the Atlantic coast of Belize, south of the Mexican island of Cozumel. Roatan is long and thin (50km x 1-2 km) and runs roughly east-west. The tourist part is on the western end, with little towns like West End, West Bay, Sandy Bay, etc.

Further refining of the internet search yielded several houses for rent. We chose Half Moon Bay House, part of the 'Villas at Coral Vistas' complex. HMB House has 4 bedrooms and comes with a pool, sea kayaks and is a block from the centre of West End Village, where the restaurants and other amenities are located. It's adjacent to a beach and there's supposed to be good snorkelling just off the beach. It even comes with maid service and a cook if you choose. Although we started looking at Roatan as early as January, we actually made the reservations in June to get the best choice of weeks.

Honduras can be reached by several air lines, but our choice was as direct a flight as possible, which meant that we had to go with Continental Airlines via Houston. Since they only fly once per day from Houston, we needed to make reservations early, so that was accomplished in early July through the always helpful Danica at Marlin Travel.

Our friends for the trip include Lynda and Linda from Calgary, and Bonnie from Brampton, Ontario. The four from Calgary will fly down to Houston and will meet Bonnie there for the final leg of the journey to Roatan.

As we get closer to the departure date, Elaine has been corresponding with Liz, the property manager. Liz will ensure that we have groceries and will provide a cook for our first evening meal (we'll fly all day and will not feel like cooking when we arrive). On the other hand, a couple of our party have indicated that they would like to take a hand in the cooking chores later in the week, so we'll see how that works out.

All that's left now is to pack and wait for November.