Great, leaving for there on Sunday. Is it all quiet around Half Moon and West Bay?
You will be fine... the only area affected is Diamond Rock, several miles east of Oakridge.
Absolutely dead-on correct. This place is miles from nowhere. A really serious Jeep and a boat would be needed to access the places in this story.
This is concerning
a story reported with details from the internet that was to have occurred on March 10th. It is now 10 days later.
IF it did happen, that was bad. Understand some geography, get some perspective. I am not simply going to read a reference to
a ten day old internet story and walk away without giving a basis of reference for other SB readers.
This points up the dilema when posting "big news" about life in paradise. Exciting headlines that don't relate to much to reality, at least to the reader's understanding of geography and "the coconut telegraph" (the Island gossip line). You really don't have to look all that hard to find a (real, fully automatic) AK47 in Honduras, even the Bay Islands. Even hand grenades do show up from time to time, unfortunately used for fishing or kept as souvenirs from the 1980's. The COBRAs love a good chance to show up in paradise. I have entertained some of their operator bosses from time to time. They look at it as an easy work detail when it comes along.
Diamond Rock is about as far you can get on the way down East end of the Northern Coast.... nowhere near "anything". It would be a long ride of an hour and a half away from West End. The last 1/2 hour would be better in a Jeep.
A little geography lesson here: The bulk of tourist visits occurs to the West End, even after you filter out the hordes of Pod People that appear on the West End two or three times a week. That's where "Roatan" is. About the farthest places that any appreciable number of visitors go toward the East would be a cluster of FIBR, CCV and Turquoise Bay. That still puts them a real 45 minute
rough ride from this scene.
Even
Castaways is located at the Eastern edge of "civilization" on Roatan... also about a 35 minute challenging drive to this area in question.
The roads just are not even close to "good". What is being described is just a very isolated place.
Muddy hilly roads, mangrove swamps, canals, ocean crossings. As "close" (?) as
Castaways is to this scene, I would not fret about visiting them.
Truth be known, if you were to count the number of vacationers who stay at places anywhere East of Turquoise Bay (just East of Fantasy on the map), it might come to 25 per week. Not much happening out there in the woods, but nice places if you want to savor Roatan from the 1970's. Even these very few tiny remote resorts are located nowhere near this story. Got helicopters?
According to the now 10 day old internet post, this incident actually began on another island (St Helena), what most mistake as the far East remote tip of Roatan. It is a place where very few people ever go, fishermen included... and never a visitor. here is a great map:
http://www.lunabeachresort.com/maps/roatan_map_full_page.shtml Where it was supposed to have ended up... local Scout troops do wilderness camping and survival in this area. It takes them a full day just to walk in~ the roads are simply not reliable.
Roatan & St Helena & Morat Islands. A 40 mile island chain.
IF this internet reported story from 10 days ago is even remotely true,
yes- that is bad for everyone. But if it did occur, even by the sketchy and glowing accounts, the bad guys are long ago skedaddled~ it's not like they had moved in, they were just "fixing a flat tire". Something may indeed have happened, but take all of it in perspective.
It is absolutely nowhere near tourist areas, it is really nothing new in the Caribbean, and if something did happen 10 days ago it has long since been cleared up. Word gets out pretty fast about where not to have a boat break down.
Roatan and the Bay Islands have long been
a lesser used transit point for drug shipments heading Northward. It is really quite out of the way when compared to Nicaraguan Islands such Corn (etc), about 90 miles SE around the Cape of Honduras. This "less used" feature has occasionally made it attractive to the shippers.
A few years ago, one of the single largest seizures was made in Coxen Hole, which is the population center of Roatan. Not to fear... the ship just broke down on it's way North and drifted in, before being towed.
There is an enormous presence of of the US DEA on the island, although the only easily visible sign is that "other" radar dome (not the one for the airport). There had a business office along the road that thousands of tourists get bussed down every week- none the wiser. The drug war is very real, and our warriors are well entrenched in the Bay Islands and Belize... even more so.
If narco-traficantes were opearting
a transit base in that remote area, that's all it likely was. Bad choice on their part.
In that it is
Semana Santa time, which is an extended party for Easter (like a bad hangover from Mardis Gras or Carnival) it is no secret that large numbers of well heeled drug king-pins from Central America show up along with their retinue of goons and pneumatic girlfriends. They send their helicopters and yachts on-ahead, dragging along the Entourage with Jet Skis
being ridden behind, making the ocean crossing from the mainland. There are some resorts that are virtually paralyzed by the presence of their guests for the period. This doesn't have much impact on us unless you get hit by a drunken Jet Skier doing 45mph in a dive flag zone (who's gonna' tell 'em: "No!"?) or look at their girlfriends for more than 30 seconds. I think that's about the limit. Otherwise, a non issue... so far, but really no worse if not better than most any other Caribbean vacation week scene.
I potentially make the same error by adding to this thread, but with careful reading, you'll see that this, along with any mountain of bad PR that has been heaped upon Roatan in the last year, is really NBD.
Scorpions, on the other hand, can really #v@% you up.
. I would still love to be there because the water is still icy here.
