Thinking about trying something new - maybe the Bay Islands? Are they worthy of a visit if we don't dive? We are avid snorkelers , though. Any nice place to stay? We are not looking for luxury (obviously) but would like a place with some charm.

Mariarosa, We stayed a week on Roatan, Bay Islands, last winter and loved it. The snorkeling right from West Bay Beach (aka Tabanya Beach) is some of the most spectacular of any I've seen - including Cozumel, Belize, and the Great Barrier Reef. We two couples stayed in a house right on the beach. You can look at their web site at www.westbayvillage.com It is a beautiful beach and the little compound has 4 or 5 houses to rent. The Italian couple who manage the houses are very helpful. We used the large house, St. Mac's Villa, but they all looked charming. Hope this helps. If you want more information, send me an email at [email protected].

Thank you TC! Glad to hear the snorkeling is great. <BR><BR>I have a couple of questions:<BR>1) Any suggestions for getting a reasonable airfare?<BR>2) Any suggestions for other activities besides snorkeling and posibly visiting Copan?

Well, I don't know what you call &quot;reasonable&quot; airfares. Its not easy to get to Roatan. We took a TACA flight from Houston. At that time, there was only one non-stop flight per week - on Saturday - to Roaton. On other days one had to flight down the mainland and take a hop across to Roatan. I had heard terrible things about lost luggage with that route. Its hard for me to give you an exact cost on our tickets as we also went to Cozumel on that itinerary, but I think the TACA -Houston to Roatan roundtrip portion was about $800 US. Not cheap.<BR><BR>As for other things to do on the island, there are some pretty drives, a small museum, etc. For our part, we just sat on the beach, read books, snorkeled, went into West End for dinner, and generally lazed around. We weren't looking for any night life or tourist things on this trip. There really isn't much to see though, so that was fine with us. Its a very low key place.

I don't know when you want to go but American airlines has a $460 fare to San Pedro Sula for early June from Boston- The connector to roatan is a very cheap flight. The Mayan ruins and the museum at copan are very impresive-defionitely worth a side trip-probably overnight unless you can get a very small plane to the Copan airstrip.