Cruising the Caribbean - Day 4 Roatan, Honduras; Iguanas & Insects

I said this post will be on Iguanas and it will be.  But I am also going to include the insect pictures I took too.

IGUANAS, at Gumbalimba Preservation Park
This was the sign in the area where there were some iguana nests. 

 We then saw the nest with the iguanas on it. 

 People started to point upwards and when I took this picture I could see an iguana in the tree.  Now try as I might, I can't seem to find it. 

 While we were all looking up, this big iquana comes strolling by us. 

Iguana in Gumbalimba Preservation Park, Roatan, Honduras

Iguana in Gumbalimba Preservation Park, Roatan, Honduras

 He looked like he was posing and just daring us to take his picture. 

 Then he just moseyed away knowing he was the boss in this area.  What really got to everyone was his orange color.  So much for looking at the green iguanas.

 A different iguana in the area.

The Wikipedia link to Iguanidae


 GUMLAIMBA INSECTARIUM
I also took a lot of pictures of the insects in the Insectarium.  I think everyone enjoyed being in the building because it was so cool and comfortable to be in.  I'm sure it was climate controlled to preserve the specimens.

Once again I wished I knew spanish better or I should say latin since most of the names I  couldn't make out. 

 I did think they had them artistically arranged and did enjoyed looking at them.  The little boys really seemed to enjoy them.

 I was amazed at how big some of them were and how well they would blend in with there surroundings.

 These beetles had a lot of people looking at them.

 And it was fun hearing the comments with this display.  Could you imaging one of these crawling into your house?

 They had a lot of beautiful ones like these grasshoppers.

 But it was the butterflies that people seemed to enjoy the most.

 Just look at how pretty they were.

If I'm not mistaken I think this is the Honduras offical butterfly isn't it pretty?

The next post will be on the monkeys in the preserve.

Cruising the Western Caribbean - Day 4- Roatan, Honduras

April 8, 2015 saw us back on land again in Roatan Honduras.  My family is not one to sit ideal when there are places to see and things to do.  So in Roatan we decided to go on the tour of the Gumbalimba Preservation Park.    Since it was an all day excursion and since I took so many picture I'm going to break it into a couple of different posts.
This post will just be about the things we saw getting there and some of the beautiful plants that are in the Park.

This was the view from our cabin balcony.

 The shops that were there.

 Just look at how pretty the bay was.

 This was looking at the ship as we were driving to the park.

 I liked this view of the ship too.

 An unusual looking light house.  I was having trouble with glare from the windows and didn't get the best shot of it.  Since most of the pictures weren't turning out I stopped trying to get any.

GUMBALIMBA PRESERVATION PARK
This was a picture of our guide.  She had us meet at this tree.  It was an interesting tree to look at while we were gathering up after our restroom break.

 Higher up the tree two of the branches had merged together.  I hadn't see anything like that before and thought it deserved a picture. 

The flowers were so beautiful. I just wished I could have read Spanish so I would know what they were.

 Also the vegetation was so lush and verde.

 They had a lot of parrots around and some of them were kept in a cage.  I was able to get this picture by shooting through a hole in the cage.

 After we had seen the other things in the park we went to Monkey Town island.  To get there you had to cross over this rope bridge.  It was pretty rickety and I wasn't brave enough to try to get a picture from it.  Afterwards I got this and thought it was so pretty.

The bridge to monkey town at the Gumbalimba Preservation Park, Roatan Honduras

 Going back we did stop and saw this diorama of the island.  It was nice to see and everyone didn't want to leave because it was so cool.

Wikipedia on Honduras
And about the island Bay_Islands_Department

Again we had a beautiful sunset.

Tomorrow I'm going to show the iguana's in the place.

Cruising the Western Caribbean - Day 2 & 3

April 6 & 7, 2015
For Spring break my family and I went cruising on the Navigator of the Seas.  We had two days sea and really didn't do much.  It was sooo relaxing.  I loved the fact that we had no telephone or internet connections.  It really made me feel like we were on a vacation and my spouse was able to unwind.  We did take advantage of the ships spa area and pampered ourselves with hot stone massages.

I didn't take a lot of pictures.

The most exciting thing was seeing another ship passing us or I should say we passed it.  For the most part we didn't see anything but blue blue water and blue skies.

 The sunsets were exquisite to watch and I did enjoy doing that.

 The main thing we did do was explore the ship and took advantage of all its amenities.

 Needless to say the food and drink was fabulous.  We did spend one meal as the sushi restaurant.  While there I had to get a Kirin Light beer.  My nieces name is Kirin and I thought that was a good play on words since Kirin means light, in either Gaelic or Japanese - I can't remember which one it is.  I also did it in memory of my brother, her father, who has since passed on in this world but is never forgotten. His birthday used to be today- the seventh. I had to toast it with something he would have wanted to drink.

Cruising the Western Caribbean - Day 1; 4-5-2015

My family loves to go on Cruises and it had been awhile since we had gone on one as a family.  So for Spring Break this year we decided to go ahead and go on one.  This time we choose Royal Caribbean - Navigator of the Seas.   We decided to go on this cruise mainly because of the times it was available and also it left out of Galveston, Texas.  Galveston is so much easier for us to get to since its a day drive to there, unlike the ships that leave out of  Florida.  We are leery of flying to Florida because once before our plane was delayed and we missed the ship and over half the cruise. The cruise line put us up at a resort hotel at our next port of call but it just wasn't the same as being on the ship.   Now if we can drive we much rather do that.

These are the images that were taken that first day as we left Galveston.
The ship pushes itself away from the dock by using its thrusters.  Its such an unusual feeling having the ship go sideways.  When it gets to the middle of the channel it then starts to move forward.

This looking towards the back of the ship.

 Looking at the cruise terminal you can see all sorts of birds in the water.  The thrusters stir up the waters and it obviously brings food to the birds for they to be so concentrated in this area.

 I thought it was so neat to be able to look down and see the birds flying below us.  It's not often you can watch the top of a bird as it is flying.

 The Navigator of the Seas wasn't the only cruise ship making this voyage.  Here's a Carnival cruise ship doing basically the same trip.  We had traveled with Carnival before but the kids didn't like it as much as they do Royal Caribbean.

 This is part of the pier shopping area.  I've been to it before and have enjoyed it.  The sailing ship to the right is  the 1877 Iron Barque 'ELISSA',  and I've been on it before.  2011/09/beautiful-flowers-other-things-around

Going past it and looking back at it.

This is the Ocean Star Oil rig.  I've been here before and written about it as being one of my favorite places to visit./2011/09/ocean-star-offshore-rig-museum-galeston  I wished I could have visited it again but time did not allow it.  At least I got to take pictures of it from a different angle.

Here's another view of it.

It was interesting to see this tug boat hard at work pulling this barge away from the pier.

It was a pretty overcast day and we did have rain as we were driving down so I was not able to get some good picture of Galveston. 

I did like this showing the channel marker and also the coastline of the city.

This was looking back up the channel towards Houston.

The birds around there were magnificent.  It was so much fun watching them fly all around us.  What really amazed me was the size of some of the sea gulls.  

This was not a sea gull but a brown pelican.  Galveston always seem to have a lot of pelicans hanging out by the waters edges.

Another brown pelican flying.

The rest of the day and for the next couple of days we just took it easy since we were at sea for 3 days.