If you follow me on social media, you may know that I just recently got back from Allure of the Seas with my family. We did the Western Caribbean tour, touching the three most common ports for trips out of Galveston. My favorite of these is Roatán, a little island off the coast of Honduras with big personality.
For this trip, we booked a private tour with Bodden Tours. It’s about $100 for a private tour guide who will meet you right there in port, usher you to an air-conditioned vehicle, and drive you around the island anywhere you want to go. (That page, by the way, reads like a Best Things to Do in Roatán picture catalog. Go ahead, browse! I’ll just wait here…)
As with all of cruising, there’s more to do than you can possibly hit in a single trip, but our highlights from the day show that visiting with the animal life is one of the best things to do in Roatán, absolutely!
Hug a Sloth!
First thing in the morning, we met up with our guide and booked it over to the Monkey and Sloth Sanctuary, so that I could hug a sloth.
It was hilarious to me watching the sloths look around. They had exactly the same slow-motion, sleepy-smile mannerisms that I’ve seen animated to great comedic effect. There were some fairly young baby sloths, so my kiddos got to hold one of those, and the husband and I got to hold mama sloth. Their wiry fur was softer than I expected!
Capuchins, macaws, and toucans – oh, my!
While we were in the sanctuary, we also got to “meet and greet” with some white-faced Capuchin monkeys and a variety of birds. Some of the animals we simply fed through the bars of the cage, but there were two other hands-on animals. In both cases, they had clearly been trained that when they stood on the tourists, they got snacks. In the macaw enclosure, one of two birds was carefully following instructions to move from one of our (hat-covered) heads to another for treats, when the second bird got impatient! He flew across to my daughter’s head the moment she took a step and started clicking his beak. “I found a hat, too! Aren’t you proud? Now feed me!!”
Iguana Refuge
The iguana farm was especially interesting following on the heels of the many enclosures of the monkey & sloth sanctuary, because all of the iguanas roamed freely across the ground. In fact, as we neared the area where we would be feeding them, an entire herd of iguanas came charging across the road to gather around our feet. It was a little bit unnerving, like a miniature version of a scene from Jurassic Park! They turned out to be quite docile, though, lying across our tennis shoes and waiting patiently for the tour guide to hand out large leaves to feed them – at which point they mounded up, climbing on top of one another to be first to snag a bite!
Tour the Reef
After grabbing some lunch, we capped off the afternoon with a glass-bottom boat tour. While the boat has nothing on an actual scuba trip (like last May’s excursion with Anthony’s Key), the kids enjoyed the view of the reef and pointing out every new variety of fish outside the windows.
Roatán is a vibrant port with a variety of things to do and see for such a small island, from wild zipline adventures to drinking margaritas and walking the shops in West End Village… but for our last trip, we count touring the animal life among the very best things to do in Roatán!
