The impact on the old pirate island of Roatan is more than violent – and probably exactly what every pirate has experienced for hundreds of years: a small conspiratorial community beyond any law against the rest of the world, and a bottle of rum to boot! Today, the world voluntarily comes to the pirate island of Roatan. Unfortunately, they don’t realise how much more pirate than victim they are now. The English pirates once used Roatan as a base for their raids on the Spanish crown colony 50 kilometres to the south. Today we use it as the last wild west before sunrise. The capital of Roatan is named after the B-class pirate Coxen. The “Hole” behind it is the last bastion against the property mania. Blackbeard grabs Gilette and robs whatever the gringo’s greed for a slice of pirate paradise will allow.
I’m lucky, land in a good spot again and immediately go to pirate training with the well-travelled, multilingual Honduran Jose. He gives me a lot of great stories and deep insights into a divided island.
The pirates certainly didn’t come ashore in the past to simply fall asleep. So after 16 hours on the road and a quick shower, I set off with the buccaneers from my hostel for a long first night. This is immediately followed by two more. At first the nights are bright, later I see stars in broad daylight.
In our pirate hostel on Sandy Bay, we cooked our last suppers every day and shared the treasures of our forays through debauched nights. The Goonies would have been proud of us. Except on weekends, the bars close at 22:00. That’s the time we usually just leave. There’s nothing we miss until dawn for a week, but you can’t blog real pirate stories. Just this much: we swing into the water from the masts of hijacked yachts. Losing the key to our own treasure chest here and there. Diving with sharks and manta rays. Even the police always keep the correct safety distance from our beach fires.
The wind on Roatan is initially offline for five days. The only kite spot is in Camp Bay, 35 kilometres over rough gravel roads to the west. There are no buses to get there, a taxi would cost $60. Hotels in Camp Bay cost at least $75. Neither is an option for pirates. I drive with Jose to nearby Bricks Bay. There, a balmy breeze blows over a wide and very sharp fringing reef emerging from the low tide. No chance of kiting for the first time in weeks.
I get myself a Honduran SIM card and work as much as I can for a few days. Then the WWW also goes offline. Blog writing lags behind my experiences. This is entry number 600 – happy birthday, blog! Thanks to Google’s repsonsive web design offensive, orders are piling up for several weeks. Even working full-time, I wouldn’t be able to complete them in a timely manner and am postponing everything to a month later, to Germany. The worst thing, however, is travelling: I no longer see anything. It’s as if I’ve already been everywhere. My curiosity has died sailing on a three-master. I sadly realise that I am a rather travel-weary one-eyed pirate who has lost his way. Travelling low point.
The next trip is guaranteed to be a 5* all-inclusive holiday. Three weeks at a standstill in 18 square metres. And so much wind every day that no tedious tale of a terrourist could ever make me yawn.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.