These are some thought that Stephanie had on our Roatan Vacation, and these are our own thoughts, not necessarily the thoughts of our traveling companions.
I had been a little reluctant to go on a trip to a destination where you have to watch what you eat and drink in order to avoid getting an intestinal illness. It had happened once to me in Cancun, Mexico, while vacationing there for a week many years ago. I had decided after that trip that it was more relaxing to go places where this was not an issue, especially since I had been very particular on the trip to Cancun about the water, had really paid attention to using bottled water for drinking and brushing teeth, and also paid attention to what I ate, only to get a small case of an intestinal bug anyway during that trip.
Most of our fellow travelers on this Roatan trip ended having some symptoms the intestinal bug Stephanie and I got, but it was later in the trip, or after arriving back home. We now believe that it was due to the ice we had purchased at a local bar, even though this is the same ice used for drinks at the bar itself, and a lot of tourists were drinking drinks with ice in them. We all had some of the ice in drinks back at the house, maybe Stephanie and I had more drinks with ice in them than the others in our group, and it impacted us first. It could have been something else, but the point is that it did lessen the enjoyment of yet another trip to a country where the water is not drinkable.
While the house was really nice, and in a great location, the impact of the cruise line crowds did not make it as enjoyable when the ships were in port. The beaches became crowded, and the vendors increased dramatically on port days. This certainly diminished the calm, relaxing atmosphere of having a beachfront house. It was the general belief of our fellow travelers that the beach traffic of tourists had increased even compared to their stay in the same house last year.
Lastly, the flights to Roatan are fairly expensive, surely driven by the limited number of flights in and out of Roatan, only one per day per airline (Continental, American and Delta Only), only two days of the week. Supply and demand principles at work. The experience of all of the flights leaving at basically the same time on Saturday was really unacceptable. They should be able to stagger them at least 30 minutes, there is no possible way that three large planes can all board and depart withing a few minutes of each other with the limited Roatan Airport staff.
It is surely a nice place for diving, which is why the majority of people go there to stay for a week. Without going there for dedicated diving, which is not something we participate in, it is our thought that there are more food/water friendly warm weather spots to vacation at that are also cheaper to get flights to.
The other item that seemed to cause some issues was the unreliable power. We had power outages on four nights, and the power seemed to always go out at about the time it got dark, obviously due to an increase in power loads when lights were turned on and everyone was cooking or bathing with hot water. It was not aggravating once, but it actually happened a couple of nights in a row, and was just bothersome. I guess that is why all of the larger hotels and bar/restaurants have their own generators so that they can make their own power when the outages occur.
We enjoyed it for what it offered, but based on our overall experience, would most likely not go back to for a vacation. Our motto will be “No drink the water, no stay on vacation”.