Mom & Dad visit

Mom and Dad began the cascade of visitors to me here in Roatan. While my first months were a little lonely, I wished for visitors. Then suddenly, everyone planned their trips one after another. M&D arrived December 5th. We rented a car and drove around the island 2 different days. 

We had lunch at at Parrot Tree Plantation, a gigantic beautiful resort on a private beach. This perfectly manicured resort had nearly no inhabitants. It's just another example of how much the local economy is hurting. 

I had heard from a taxi driver, that to find true Garifuna music, go to the Flamingo in Punta Gorda (a Garifuna community) on a Sunday afternoon. And so we did. We were absolutely the only white people and everyone stared at us with friendly curiosity at how the gringos got to their local hang out. The men played drums and turtle shell instruments and sang while the women shook their booties quite literally. 

This is a neighborhood in Los Fuertes. These houses are an example of the poverty that most of the kids live in who I see at the clinic. It is good to drive around the island to place in my mind where the patients we see are from. 

Another day we took a water taxi from Jonesville to the infamous Hole in the Wall Restaurant, run by expats who look like they have become pirates after years of baking in the sun and drinking. We ate conch fritters which I now know is terrible because conch are endangered and captured illegally from the Marine Park. We met a crazy old man named Clyde who boated us back to shore just as the rain began pouring on us.