Turtle Crossing, West Bay, Roatan

AAfter a fitful nights sleep I awoke as usual at 3:AM to read and await dawn. These damnable winds no small part in my fitful rest. The tree tips are shredded from their violent thrashing to and fro in these awful trades. From our perch on the hillside we are only 200 feet back and 50 feet above the ocean. In this constant wind the waves roll and hollow at a turbulent swell while the crests spume off in caps of white. It is a roiling immensity, a "horizontal violence" from horizon to horizon, from the curvature of the earth to the east to the pale blue shadows of Honduras across and away to the South. An immense caldron of constant motion. Like the winds.

In this elemental intensity, windblown, I have stepped outside on the deck to stare and marvel and anger at this unmindful and uncaring imminence. I am pitifully insignificant by the scale but giant in my outrage of impotence.

Merely 50 feet below me, along the shore the closely spaced roofs of houses almost buried amongst the palm fronds seem to jut out into this sea. In futile bravado they seem to shoulder forward, as waves kill themselves upon the rocks in thunderous walls of liquid lace and drench the seward walls unseen from my vantage. It is all too much. As I watch the roofs appear to roll and surge into the oncoming waves I feel the wooden deck beneath my feet go along for the ride, vibrations amplified by the winds forcing my stance. I understand the tempestuous manners of the sea sailing captains of old needing to pace the decks in the fury of such uncontrolable force.

Finally the heavens begin to lighten as the sun prepares its rise from the eastern sea. Will this event bring a momentary abatement to the wind and the waves ? Of course not. Hope can be blind. But there's always one more song.

A strange respite. This morning I put on my earphones to listen to some iTunes while I read, usually I can not mix the two and need silence to read. But for awhile I did not hear the wind and it was a brief relief.

Today we drove over the ridge and down the west side to the beaches and eateries. Much calmer.
The waters were almost still and of that pearlescent jade blue associated with clear sandy benches beneath the waters. It was not too crowded today as the cruise ships were not in today to disgorge their tens of thousands. So we enjoyed ourselves. However, JoAnn for the twentieth year in a row neglected her sun tan lotion and proceeded to burn herself again despite my yearly admonitions of every tact. This time it was to not use lotion in order to save the reefs from all the bodies oiled up. So she chose the reefs over the real potential of skin cancer after all those years or burns. We make our choices. So now she again suffers lobster red and radiating solar burn and heat.

This evening we checked out a restaurant, Smugglers, down the road and discovered a beautiful isolated cove fronting the place just as that sunburn sun sank. Unfortunately the cove outshown their menu so we motored west again back to Infinity Beach Resort and were surprised by the huge burger we shared, dripping with sauteed onions and mushrooms and a hand packed patty. Always a surprise somewhere. Sometimes its as plebeian as a hamburger. Back home to the wind.