It was a very early start on Monday – in an Uber to the airport at 4:30am. We caught a 6am flight to Miami, “enjoyed” a couple of hours layover, and then took the next short flight to Roatan, Honduras. A very bumpy thirty minute ride over an often washed out road and we arrived at the Kimpton Grand Roatan Resort. The resort was purchased by Kimpton since we visited two years ago, and they have made many improvements, upgrades, and expansions. While quite luxurious, with new restaurants and amenities, we missed some of the character of the old set up.
Here’s a map that shows the location of Roatan island:
After some lengthy negotiations, we secured a beach front condo with a wonderful view.
The trip is to honour the top performing employees from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – there were about forty of them in attendance. We had a reception for them on Monday night, and the girls enjoyed dinner on their own – a wonderful paella topped with lobster.
Tuesday was a full day of presentations and discussions. I participated in a panel discussion on “mindset” that seemed to be well received. My very favourite segment was a presentation by Andrea Cardona, the first Latin American woman to summit Everest. This was the best business talk that I’ve heard – beautifully linked back to the topic of the day, and presented with a complete lack of ego. The answers that Andrea gave to the audience questions were excellent.
Andrea has asthma and it was fascinating to hear all the approaches that she deployed to counteract the impacts at the highest elevations.
Here’s a video of a short segment of Andrea’s presentation:
She said that she had a whole special speech planned for the summit, but just couldn’t get enough air to do it:
Meanwhile, the girls were enjoying some quality beach time. The weather was not perfect – quite windy – but they made the best of it.
They did pick up an extra member of the “girls” group – Lee, Belinda’s husband:
There was a fancy reception with dinner and dancing on Tuesday night, starting with a group picture on the beach:
Here’s the leadership team subset:
The dinner was good, and the fun really began with the dancing.
Unlike two years ago, when Lisa and Diana had to get the party started, the group was raring to get the dance floor up and going. Of course Diana took full advantage of the opportunity to show her moves:
It wouldn’t be a real party without a conga line:
There were meetings again on Wednesday afternoon, and then free time in the afternoon. The group enjoyed the ocean and sunset pictures.
That’s Diana, Jorge, and Sofie waving to me.
A small group of us enjoyed dinner in the Mediterranean restaurant on Wednesday evening, and then Blair arranged for the very talented guitar player in the restaurant to give us a private outdoor concert :
Some dancers joined in:
The guitar player went in to get a capo, so Jorge took over – is there no limit to this man’s talents?
Most of the group left on Thursday morning, and so Diana and I enjoyed some quiet time by the pool, followed by a relaxing meal in the Mediterranean restaurant. Diana had some more of the excellent octopus, while I enjoyed some more of the squid ink linguini with shrimp, mussels and clams. We had shared those with the table the previous night, and were happy to repeat the highlights.
We did take advantage of the “social hour” on the upstairs restaurant balcony before dinner – what an amazing view:
We snapped a quick selfie and then took a shuttle to the airport for our long day of travel back home. The four hour layover in Miami really was a bit too long, getting us home shortly before midnight.
The Kingpin had a band called “The Been Around Band” on Saturday afternoon. Most of the Krewe (minus Denny and Anne – in Alabama) assembled and enjoyed the music – quite a different kind of band than normal.
The Blues and BBQ festival is an annual event put on by the Jazz and Heritage Festival folks – so the sound and timing are always impeccable. Here’s the lineup for Sunday:
We arrived in time to see Billy Iuso at noon. The event was very quiet due to the Saints game at the same time.
We humoured a Jazz and Heritage employee who was taking pictures and videos with signs:
Iuso played a great set of covers and originals.
That was followed by Mitch Woods and his Rocket 88s, with John Fohl on guitar – he really can play any style of music. Here’s the song I hear every morning as Diana’s alarm clock:
We finished up with a wonderful sounding Eric Lindell band:
What a wonderful free day of music!
We headed back home to watch the Cowboys game and should have stayed at the festival – a pathetic performance all around.
I finished up “Tell Me Everything” by the amazing Elizabeth Strout. What an excellent book – weaving together the characters from all her previous novels into a new set of tales.
The characters are some of my favourites in all of my reading. Highly recommended.
Some of that great 70s feel from Candi Staton:
A great sounding song from the Allman Bros offspring:
And finally, a deep cut from Tom Petty:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!
We were in an Uber over to Gretna fest within a couple of hours. We set up in time to enjoy an excellent set from Galactic:
