WRITTEN by JOHN MORRIS
Don’t be fooled… Roatan Time is much slower than the rest of the world.
Island time really does exist… and here on Roatan it is the norm.
It’s like being ‘on time’ is arriving early. But seriously, who cares?
Things move slower here and for me time flies. Maybe I’m having too much fun?
I rarely remember the date of the current day or even the day of the week because most of the time, it does not matter.
A day is a day, right? Islanders live by the sun.
It’s simple. Your fingers are all you need to tell time:
“Stretch your arm as far as you can and count the number of fingers between the sun and the horizon. That’s it. Easy. Each finger represents about 15 minutes of remaining sun time.”
Daylight savings time here? Nope. They tried it twice but the resulting confusion made it impossible.
Me: “Enguel, Be here at 7 a.m.”
Enguel: “Is that the new time or the old time?”
So half the year we are on Central USA time and the other half on Mountain USA time which only matters if you need to contact someone outside of the island or if you’re trying to figure out what time your favorite team is playing.
It certainly makes things simple. Our shortest day in terms of daylight is 11 hours and 10 minutes… and the longest is 13 hours and 6 minutes.
My wife misses the long Italian summer nights with sunsets around 10 p.m. Not me. Nice to visit but I used to hate waking up in the morning darkness to make it to work by 8 a.m.
The time and day are only really important when it is a holiday and trust me, we have a lot of holidays on Roatan.
With folks living here from every corner of the world, we celebrate everything. Canadian and US Thanksgiving, Canada Day, July 4th, Australian Day, Honduran Independence Day, just to name a few.
Then there is everyone’s birthday for a least a weekend but usually a month. That’s right, Happy Birthday month!
Retail stores are no different. Right now it is late October and in the leading department stores there is a mix-mash of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations scattered among the aisles.
Somebody on Facebook recently coined it as “Hallothanksmas“. Perfect.
And yes, we have turkey dinners on the island for both Thanksgivings and Christmas, too. That is, if they are available at the grocery stores.
This year, two days before Canadian Thanksgiving, someone posted frantically on Ask Anything Roatan/Facebook that there were no turkeys to be found in any of the grocery stores. Most answers were quite clever and funny but only one addressed the problem and reported that the delivery for the turkeys was to be by the week’s end.
You see, we live on an island and depend on the ocean shipping companies to supply us with almost everything.
But things like weather can get in the way of these shipments. Just ask an islander when the next shipment of turkeys will be here, and don’t be surprised to hear…
“Da boat soon come mon’.” After all, we are on island time.
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