Our Destination today was Roatan Island, 29 miles long and only 2 miles wide, and what a tropical island paradise it is too! (Discounting the building site we had to walk through the minute we disembarked from the ship - this will be their new quayside terminal when it's finished).

The tour I was assigned to today took us to Colombala Botanical Gardens, where we were treated to a whole range of interesting trees (such as the mahogany, cinammon and cashew trees), tropical plants and flowers, and snakes snoozing in the branches above our heads. Our enthusiastic young guide bounded around telling us about everything we came across with good humour, and even sang to us as she chopped up a pineapple and a mango for all to sample. Her cheerful demeanour paid dividends when it came to the end of our guided tour; the passengers couldn't thrust money into her hands fast enough!

After this, we were taken to a Butterfly Park, where Macaws screeched at us, and parrots chuntered and sqwarked at us. Beautiful, large, red birds with very long tails posed in the trees and preened themselves for the cameras, and some parrots were happy to sit on visitors' fingers for the purposes of taking souvenir photographs. The butterfly enclosure was fun to walk through; with all butterflies of all sizes and colours flapping past us and dutifully doing lots of butterfly-things.

Finally, our tour took us to West End Village, which is as typical a Caribbean-looking location as any. Here, the beach curves its way around the bay, broken only by swaying palm trees, boats and cruise passengers slowly sizzling in the 36-degree midday heat. Bars and Cafes beckon, and establishments lure visitors to go diving out by Roatan's Barrier Reef. We were given a complementary drink and told we had an hour of free time before having to reboard the bus. I spent most of it paddling.

There were three buses laid on for this trip, yet only two tour escorts. No matter how much care is taken in the checking of passenger numbers to ensure that enough escorts are provided, it seems the only thing that the excursion people on board can't predict with any certainty, is how the numbers will be split up once on the quayside. On my bus we had 24 passengers, myself and the guide, and every seat was taken. The reason I'm describing all this is because the unexpected third bus, doing the tour the opposite way around so as to avoid congestion at the botanical gardens and the butterfly garden, was sat on the quayside in West End Village waiting for 4 passengers who had failed to return to the bus on time. They'd arrived at 9:30am and the guide had told the passengers to be back at the bus by 10:30am. It was now 11:30am, and tempers were starting to fray. One American gentleman came up to me (even though I wasn't assigned to his bus, which didn't have an escort) demanding to know if I was with the Balmoral, and what was I going to do about the situation. He was livid; he said he was going to demand his money back and kick up a right old stink about this. Ultimately, of course, the bus had to leave, but leaving it an hour did seem a little on the excessive side. I offered to look around and see if I could spot the absent passengers, and squeeze them onto the remaining 2 buses should they turn up before our time to leave, but the chances were, they'd probably just taken a taxi back to the ship anyway (because that's what some people do - without any thought whatsoever for the consequences).

Anyway; our tour finished without incident. I still don't know what happened to the 4 missing passengers, but as we set sail at 4pm, on time, and without any announcements, I'm assuming they made it back to the ship by themselves. Before leaving, I finally managed to find a local internet cafe, where I successfully uploaded the photographs I'd so spectacularly failed to upload yesterday, so it's worth just checking back over the previous posts (from Miami onwards) to see the photies.

Tomorrow, we're docking in Mexico, and I've been assigned a 7-and-half hour tour to see some aztec ruins - Woo Hoo!!!! Bring it on!

Once again, it's been a very hot day. Although I enjoy the novelty of unbroken good weather and temperatures in the mid- to high-80s, I must say I find it can be rather draining, and by late afternoon all I want to do is sleep. I've spoken to a few other passengers about this, and most report the same thing. Throughout the trip so far, I've found 10:30pm to be about my limit (earlier on a couple of occasions) - after I've had dinner and took a glance at whatever is going on around the ship, maybe had a couple of beers and checked mail in the internet room, I'm ready to hit the sack.