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Take only pictures
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

The water around our Roatan boathouse is clearer than ever today now that we’ve gotten a week without any storms. Colin noticed an oddly regular brown shape from the deck so I took the snorkel down to have a look. I climbed in off the boat dock and nearly stepped on a spread-hand sized Upside-down Jellyfish lying on the muddy bottom pretending to be a flower. Trying not to stir up the thick mud, I made my way to the shape Colin had seen. It was an incredibly ugly fish with froglike arms and gill holes in its underarms, probably a Longnose Batfish. It’s a kind of angler that, like the upside-down jelly, sits and attracts lunch to it using its (tasty-looking, I guess?) lure nose.

As Colin was coming to join in, I swam over to the posts holding up the boat dock, which are so thickly covered in seaweed and orange sponges they’ve got their own ecosystem going. Among the feather worms I spotted, for the first time, a lionfish! And then another, and then another, and another… We counted maybe a dozen in all, little ones sticking close to the poles and the boat keel. The venemous lionfish are a recent invasive species in the Carribbean which they all came from a couple released pets. The people here are not happy about it and kill them if they see them, so ours will likely be eradicated soon. It’s funny that everybody keeps warning us about the dreaded (but beautiful) lionfish, and when we finally find them they’re under our own dock. If they’ve been here all along when the water was murky, it’s a wonder I haven’t been stung yet since we’ve been getting in and out of the water just a few feet from their favorite spot!

As I mentioned it’s been sunny and calm for nearly a week, so we’ve been in the water every day for longer and longer. Yesterday went on a snorkeling swim amost halfway to Jonesville. I burned my bum! The reef stretches all the way around Roatan, it’s the second biggest in the world after the Great Barrier and so varied. But although the incredible coral formations and innumerable colourful fish are amazing, I keep finding the most interesting things in the shallower waters of our bight. Conches for instance – they’re everywhere, and they’ve got such cute eyes! I hear they make a mean conch stew here but that they’ve being over-fished and getting smaller every year.

One thing I love is to get right into the mangroves with a snorkel and see how much is living down in the underwater forest. You have to move carefully to avoid the urchins, but there are tiny brightly colored fish, little crustations with wavy antennae, fast-moving (I call them ‘cruising’) starfish, fuzzy water catterpillars and of course those numerous red crabs that run up and down the mangrove trees and plop down into the water if you get too close. We saw a lot of those in Thailand too. In fact it’s surprising how many plants and animals Roatan has in common with Koh Phangan.

Well, now that I’ve seen lionfish I can check that off my list. I’m still eager to see a turtle and a ray (we’ve spotted both from outside the water), and to find another octopus since Colin didn’t get to see the one I met in the shallow grasses last week. It was a little sand-colored guy who scooted around surprisingly fast as I tried to get him to latch on to my hand.

I should have brought a waterproof case for the camera! I expected some good snorkeling days in the rainy season, but it’s been far nicer under the water than I expected. Whoo!

Roatan’s Pirates
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We had our first trip to the infamous Hole in the Wall restaurant a couple days ago. We were celebrating our host Marcia’s birthday over drinks with some of the local boys. Back in the 1600’s Roatan was haven to pirates (including Captain Morgan) who preyed off Spanish gold fleets leaving the mainland. We discovered that there are still pirates in Roatan, and they frequent Hole in the Wall. They even have a macaw, so that proves it.

While we had drinks (and Colin a hand-rolled Honduran cigar) we watched people bringing their boats in to shelter from the coming storm. Hurricane Richard was due to come right over Roatan early the next morning and many people weren’t taking chances. We watched the weather channel and joked that Hole in the Wall may not be there in 24 hours. Thinking of the shoddy little huts on stilts that make up much of Jonesville and Oak Ridge, I wondered how they’d survive. I learned that during Hurricane Mitch the owners pulled up the floorboards so big waves could just wash in and out without carrying the house away with them – pretty smart. The churches up on the hills were getting ready to accomodate families overnight and through the next day.

We moved up to the big house for the night just in case, as the boat house where we are staying is sturdy, but made of wood and sits on stilts over the water. We were woken up at four in the morning by the howling wind and rain. Marcia and Dennis got up to monitor the storm, but we (having not much to lose except sleep) went back to bed.

Turns out Roatan lucked out: Richard skirted north and didn’t reach Hurricane status until after it had passed and was on its way to terrorize Belize. Our hosts lost a couple trees and Hole in the Wall’s kitchen roof blew off, but there was no major damage in our area. It took the power company until today to get the juice going again, but we had a generator for dawn and dusk so no biggie, it just gave us a reason to take a kayak trip once the wind died down so we could check the bight for damage.

We tied up our kayaks at the point and walked around it to explore the sandy(ish) beaches so protected by the reef that you can’t access them by boat. We found all kinds of shells and coral and a fair bit of garbage washed up by the storm. Colin made friends with a hermit crab – it was nearly lifelong friends until Colin was able to convince the bugger to let go of his finger. When we got back we had a birthday dinner for Marcia and celebrated that everything was still standing.

When the storm moved through it pulled all the local moisture with it, so this morning was gloriously sunny without a cloud in the sky – we could even see all the way to the mainland for the first time. The water in our bight still looks like milk chocolate from all the runoff, but we went snorkeling up at the mouth where visibility was better. I saw an octopus! We packed a lunch and hung out on a neighbor’s deck amid dips back in the water. Such a beautiful day, thank you Richard!

Pookie’s Monkey
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

So we’ve been in Honduras for a week now, and today was the best day yet. When our plane landed a week ago a storm was just starting, and it stayed overcast and rainy for the next four days. It’s the wet season so this isn’t much of a surprise, but we hadn’t totally realized how awesome this place is until the sun came out. Since then we’ve been in the water every chance we get – there’s no telling how long it will last!

Yesterday one of the local boys Charleston showed us around the nearby towns Jonesville and Oakridge. By boat of course! He got his first boat at age 12 and spent much of his childhood boat racing and doing stunts. He explained some of the tricks and told us stories of blasting through the mangrove tunnels at full throttel, guided only by a strip of moonlight coming through the trees. We blasted through them ourselves then took a leisurly cruise around the neighboring bights as he pointed out the best local shops and some hotspots you can only get to by water. We went for lunch at Pookie’s which has a bit of a zoo going as well as delicious homemade hot sauce. As you can see, Colin made friends with their monkey. I admired the small crocodiles which were caught from the wild just one cove over (scary!). Turns out Charleston was also an avid video gamer and Colin persuaded him to playtest Clutter when we got back.

Today we took the kayaks out to the end of the bight and went snorkelling in the most amazing spot ever. Move over Koh Phangan, Roatan’s got it (specifically Caribbean Point Bight). The visibility was amazing, and everything was so up close and personal. The huge coral formations make caves and canyons you can swim through, giant purple fan corals and vast fields of orange finger coral. A million multi colored fishes – parrotfish and barracuda and puffers I could name but I’ll have to look up the other hundred species. We swam out to where the reef drops off twenty feet and could see nearly to the bottom. Spectacular!

In the afternoon we threw some inflatable beds into the water and just floated around for awhile. There is a steady current flowing out to sea from here so we have to anchor ourselves or slowly drift away, but next time I’m just going to let go and see where I end up (but bring the fins with me so I can get back). There are starfish, monstrously huge sea cucumbers and schools of little silver fish right around and under the dock and the reef is just a couple hundred meters away.

Did Colin mention the hummingbirds? As soon as we arrived and opened all the doors and windows, we had hummingbirds shooting through the living room and zipping up to us to chirp inquisitively. They’re wonderful! Marcia brought us a feeder which she warned us not to leave out because bats would come visit it – so of course we’re leaving it out tonight because we want to see them as well.

And for anyone who wants to follow along on Google Maps, we are here.

View from the living room
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Alright, I’m finally going to do a writeup on our first couple of days in Honduras.

We got here… three days ago? Yesterday? Day before yesterday. Definitely the day before yesterday. We flew directly to Roatan which is an island off the coast of main-land Honduras to be picked up by Marcia, who we are renting the house from.

It was immediately impossible to not start drawing comparisons to Koh Phangan, Thailand. Some of the smells are the same, everything looks green and jungly, it’s hot and humid, the roads are concrete instead of asphault, lots of similarities. But also differences.

Phangan has a massive beach party that doubles the population of the island once a month. Roatan is starting to get cruise ships that swell the population of the island mightily. But these simmilar occurances have had different effects on the islands, I think mostly due to the way life ran beforehand.

Note that, while we spent 6 months on Phangan, and I feel like I sort of know that place, we’ve been on Roatan for a few days, so I don’t know this place well at all. But it still feels to me like Phangan was a more communal, more socially knit place than Roatan.

Really, this all comes from Phangan having these nice little village-city centers where people met and ate and bought food and movies and hung out. Where-as Roatan seems to be missing this. While in Thongsala the pre-exiting local market thrived with the monthly wax of travelers in Roatan big grocery stores seem to have eclipsed and destroyed thriving local markets (although we may have just not found them yet).

Mabey this is the difference between Cruise ship money and backpacker money. Anyway, it’s pretty interesting.

From our perspective it’s not really very important since we’re not going to get very far from our house to explore the island. No, the roads aren’t scooter friendly and there’s no way we’re going to rent a car so we’re pretty much going to hang out here and wherever we can kayak to. That’s not so bad. We’ll get some work done and it’s really really nice here, as the above picture hopefully conveys.

We are literally cantelevered out over the bay, so if I leap off the balcony I will land in the ocean (and then break my legs since the water is too shallow right under the balcony). The water is warm, we have a beautiful view and our landlords keep bringing us fresh seafood. Plus they let us use their ‘kayaks’. These are the typical, awful, sit-atop kayaks that I railed against in Thailand. But, whatever, it’s good enough to bobble about our bay and the Mangrove tunnels.

Yeah, mangrove tunnels. They were cut by the native inhabitants in… pre-history? I dunno, but it’s kind of this network of water-trails cut into the mangrove forest that people use to get around. It’s fucking awesome. We did our first kayak trip today and swished through some. There are land crabs hiding in the mangroves (like Thailand) and lots of birds. It’s pretty amazing. We’ll get some pictures on a future expedition.

We’ve also been really enjoying the rain. It is rainy season here. We wanted to see what the tropics were like in the rainy season. We both like the rain so we figured it could be a good experience. So far it’s really awesome. We’ve been getting propper mamoth-rain flurries 4 or 5 times a day. It’s raining right now and I love the sound of the water on the roof and on the water below us. one of the nice things about the tropics is that all the houses are uninsulated so you can hear the sound of the rain really really well on the roof.

Professionally we’ve been trying to get a build of Clutter together for the Indie Game Festival deadline which is tomorrow. It’s all finished up so I’m pretty happy about that. There’s still a year of work or something left on the game so it’s kind of nice to have this local plateau to stand on and survey the work thus-far. Even though I think it’s a long longshot that we’ll be nominated for the festival it’s been nice to get the thing psudo-polished and psudo-playable.

We had more shrimp fajitas for lunch and Marcia brought us some tastey seafood gumbo for dinner (we boiled some lobster for dinner yesterday) so we are eating well.

Hope you are all enjoying some fall showers as well!

At the Eiffel
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We may have been influenced by the giant picture of the Eiffel Tower in the Glen’s living room, but for whatever reason we spontaneously decided to spend our last unbooked week in Paris. We booked a cheap hotel near the Gare de Nord, a little ways north of the museum area on the Seine. Our first impressions: Paris is bustling, multi-cultural, dirty and stinky. The Parisians are in need of either more public bathrooms or better self-control. I worried a bit about the security of our hotel, as we had to leave our room key at the desk where it was hung within easy reach of anyone walking in to the usually-empty lobby. But perhaps the cop shop next door helped deter would-be thieves, and at any rate we had no problems in Paris or at any time on our trip. Speaking of security though, one thing that irked me continually through Europe were doors that were locked by key from the inside. A couple times we found ourselves locked inside a building and unable to find the key. Fire hazard much?? Also impenetrable steel bolted bathroom doors in Istanbul, but that’s another story.

Anyway, Paris. I got to speak French (yay!) which I did whenever I could. I’ve hardly ever spoken it outside of school or in the last ten years so it was neat to find it came pretty naturally to me. I felt a delay in understanding people sometimes, like my brain was digging up language data from a deep cache. Conversations were harder, but I could at least get by as a tourist with ease.

Our first day we checked out Notre Dame and walked all along the Seine which was closed off and lined with palm trees and beach chairs for the summer. We ate at Brasseries, had coffee in sidewalk cafes and soaked in the Paris atmosphere. The next we visited an indie game studio Brain Candy who are in the early stages of work on a game using Unity and some seriously bangin art. There isn’t much of an indie community in France so they welcomed us as delegates of sorts. Their game looks pretty promising and they certainly have their shit together. I hope we see them at GDC in San Francisco next year when they’ll have something to show off.

Colin fell unfortunately ill that night and was out of commission for a few days. I worked on my game and explored our neighborhood a little. The first time I went out on my own to buy groceries, I was hit on by two different guys within five minutes of leaving the hotel. Not romantic at all, just like “hey baby, what’s up honey… say lady how you doin?” and walking in step beside me. They went away when I ignored them but I wasn’t keen to explore Paris on my own.

We met up with our friends Natalie and Michael who are also on an extended trip across Europe. We swapped travel stories and got a few ideas from them (maybe Switzerland next time around!). We took in local culture together at the Pompidou modern art gallery. My favorite piece was a miniature city made of rawhide in the Dreamlands special exhibit. I’ve been thinking there’s no point of taking pictures of things like that because everyone else will, but in this case I can’t find a trace of it online. It was really impressive!

Speaking of taking pictures of art, Colin and I finally made it to the Louvre on our last day. We made a beeline to the Mona Lisa which was surrounded by a huge number of people all snapping pictures of it. Colin waded to the front then turned around and took a picture of the crowd instead. I still don’t understand the allure of taking photographs of a famous thing you’ve already seen a thousand times, but I had a bit of evil fun that day getting into people’s photos. We skipped most of the paintings and went for the artifacts instead; the Louvre has an impressive Egyptian collection among other things.

But if you’re geek like us and in Paris for a few days, Colin and I recommend skipping the Louvre and going to the Musee des Arts et Metiers instead. It was, as far as we could tell in the hour before it closed, a wonderland of inventions and scientific instruments from the last few hundred years. A museum of science without all the kiddie stuff.

After Paris, Colin and I had two days in London which we spent in various museums (all, excellent, and have I mentioned that British museums are free??) and at the GBBF: The Great British Beer Festival. We decided that the Canadian version (GCBF) in Victoria is better, but it was close. The Vic one has a nice outdoor venue, lots of seating and the brewers run the stalls themselves, but it’s only two days and this year Saturday sold out within 5 minutes. The London one was six days long and a much larger venue, 3x the beers from 5x the breweries, and had an incredible selection of delicious and reasonably priced food. However, the indoor venue was dull and uncomfortable and the brewers themselves weren’t there; it was set up like an enormous circular bar and many people were drinking by the pint rather than trying as many beers as they could. But we had a great time all the same and drank our fill of warm cask-pulled British beers. We got out early enough to avoid a hangover on our flight back to Canada the next day.

The flight was blissfully uneventful, 9 hours direct from London to Calgary via cheapo Air Transat (really Thomas Cook). It was nothing like the awesome Turkish Airlines flight over but at least it was faster this time. We’re visiting Alan and Meghan now in Cow Town. So, Calgary vs Paris: they both have nice river walks, they both have bars with patio seating, but Calgary it’s hard to get an espresso outside, and Paris has fewer belt buckle stores.