PAM FRAMPTON: Roatán, Honduras is a place of sharp contrasts |
Life on Roatán unfolds on ‘island time,’ but the living isn’t easy for everyone
At dusk, you can sit on the deck and watch fruit bats flit through the gloom.
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Small and dark, they dart through the sky on flight paths of their own devising, coming close but never quite making contact with the humans in their midst.
Often, the soundtrack of their aerodynamics is a chorus of frogs, whose croaky night song sounds like an engine that never quite catches.
Here in West End, Roatán — a Caribbean island about 65 kilometres off the north coast of mainland Honduras — the nights are warm, often humid, and when the frogs take a break, you can hear the surf pounding hard against the razor-sharp coral beaches of the Iron Shore.
This is a place that isn’t driven by the relentless ticking of the clock. When people here talk about “island time,” they are serious. For someone used to precise and daily deadlines, the vague approximation for how long things will take or when establishments will open or close can be maddening.
When we ask when my brother-in-law might return from scuba-diving, we’re told the boat........