A small group of friends and I went to Roatan, Honduras for Christmas week.
Roatan is a beautiful island in the west Caribbean, off the coast of Honduras. It hasn’t yet been completely spoiled by big resorts moving in, though that definitely looks like it is starting to happen, as there are several already on the west end of the island. For now though, you can go to Roatan and still see it pretty close to how it’s been for a long time. Other than motorized vehicles and the ever-present satellite dish, it’s fairly primitive. It is most definitely a third-world country.
You could easily visit Roatan and never see anything other than your nicely packaged, pristine Americanized resort area. Never leave the insulated, cleanly-presented tropical resort. But where’s the fun in that? I highly recommend getting out and seeing some of the island.
Roatan is a long, narrow island, about 35 or 40 miles long. The west end of the island is the “civilized” end, with several small towns and the largest town of Coxen Hole, which is where the cruise ships come in when they visit. If you are intimidated by third-world flavor, you won’t want to go strolling about Coxen Hole, and in any case you won’t really want to be out and about there after dark, as most of the crime perpetrated on visitors happens there.
West End is the small town more westerly of Coxen Hole. It is mostly a single lane dirt road along the beach, fronted by dive shops, restaurants, bars, mercados, and curio shops. If scuba diving is your thing, you have a lot of choices in West End. We chose to use Coconut Tree Divers, as they looked to have the best equipment and the best boats.
We were quite satisfied with the equipment and the boats at Coconut Tree Divers, but were a bit disappointed with the overall diving experience. The dives are highly supervised, and much like little underwater tour groups. They don’t allow divers in the group to just wander about sightseeing, but they are forced to follow the lead divemaster along the route of his choice, and are followed by another divemaster who will hurry you along if you straggle behind to sightsee. That was pretty much our only complaint about Coconut Tree Divers.
The diving itself is a mixed bag. In the past, the reef around the island was not protected, and as such suffered heavy damages before the government stepped in and made it protected. It is definitely recovering, and there are some beautiful corals and fish to see, but the ravages of humanity still clearly show in most places. I’d say in another five to ten years, it should be recovered a lot better and offer even more to see than it does now. There are quite a lot of pretty tropical fish in residence though, along with the occasional sea turtle, moray eel, and shark. The water is generally very clear, with visibility of 80+ feet. The worst visibility we had while there was about 30-40 feet, which was right after a storm.
Customs entering the island was easy, though the wait in line was long since there was only one customs agent to process the whole plane flight of people we came in with. They didn’t check anything at all, or even ask us if we were bringing in anything, other than what questions are printed on the customs form (which is entirely in Spanish, so be prepared with your pocket dictionary).
Customs leaving was not as nice. They don’t have any posted regulations of what is allowed to leave the island, and it’s quite easy to find prohibited items for sale at the curio shops (like turtle shells). I purchased a conch shell from a cultural garifuna (native culture) exhibition shop, and they took it away from me at customs. I’m not sure why, since the customs agent couldn’t speak any English, and my Spanish is only good enough to ask for the bathroom, order food, and ask how much money something costs.
Not only do they screen you to get into the international terminal (which is all of two gates) but they screen you as you are boarding the plane, searching your bags and taking away anything they please. You can buy bottled drinks inside the international terminal, but unlike the USA, they won’t let you carry them onto the plane. If you don’t have your toiletries in a plastic bag, they won’t let you put them into a bag (even if you have one) but they will merely take them away. None of these agents spoke any English either, so there was no way to find out just why certain things were taken away. Also, there is a $35 fee to leave the island, which must be paid before they allow you to enter the international terminal.
Driving is an interesting experience. All I can suggest is to watch out, buy the rental insurance, and don’t expect anyone to follow any sort of rules of the road. It’s jungle driving here, baby. They pass on either side of you on blind curves, stop in the middle of the road for no reason, drive on the wrong side of the road. You name it, they do it. My suggestion is be aggressive but not foolish. Watch all around you, and don’t expect anyone to give you right of way.
Food was surprisingly non-spicy. I expected to find a lot of spicy food here, since it’s a Latin American country. But we had trouble finding anything with any kick to it, and it was even a search to find a bottled hot sauce that was actually hot instead of sweet or savory. Bring your own bottled sauce if you like spicy food.
The seafood was quite fresh and good, but there is a dearth of fresh vegetables on the island. The mercados (little grocery stores) do not sell fresh fruit or veggies. Sometimes they’ll have a few potatoes or plantains, but that’s it. The only place to get fresh fruit and veg are from locals who bring them in the back of small pickup trucks and sit alongside the road. They’ll hang a scale from a coconut tree, park their truck under it, and sell out of the back of the truck. You can find tropical fruits like pineapples and papayas and coconuts pretty easily. But things like apples and pears are a little more difficult. Lettuce is nonexistent, but cabbage is available as is broccoli, cucumbers, and cauliflower from time to time. Tomatoes and onions are common, but peppers are almost impossible to find. They’re all expensive, as most of the island isn’t good for agriculture and a lot of the fresh food items have to be brought in from the mainland.
Bugs weren’t as bad as we had been led to expect. There are sand fleas who give a nasty itchy bite, but if you DEET your ankles before walking on the beach, you’ll avoid them. The mosquito population was not high. I suffered perhaps a half dozen mosquito bites the whole time I was there, so it wasn’t bad.
Bathrooms were surprisingly acceptable for a third-world country. I didn’t see any bathroom that I would have been afraid to use, though of course preventative hygiene rules (like washing up with soap and water afterwards, and covering the toilet seat for use) definitely apply. One thing I did notice is that none of the public bathrooms I used had hot water for washing, only cold. But, they all had soap and paper towels so that was good.
Islanders are as a whole quite friendly and not pushy. About half of them (my estimate) can speak at least a few words of English. The half that can’t are quite happy to communicate with a combination of gestures and words that are mutually similar between English and Spanish. The only people I met that refused to attempt communication were the customs agents on the way out of the country. US dollars are freely accepted on the island; just be aware of what the current exchange rate is so that when you are given your change in lempiras you can know if you've been given the correct change. Out of all the purchases we made while there, only one place deliberately tried to cheat us on the exchange rate -- a restaurant called The View which is along the main highway (a single-lane road along the spine of the island). The food there was good, the service was atrocious and they did try to swindle us on the payment.
Street vendors are all over the place hawking jewelry and trinkets. Some of them find a spot to sit and sell, and others walk around trying to sell their wares. I found none of them to be obtrusive about it. They will ask you if you want to buy, but if you say no they do not pester you, but will either just walk away or they will politely wish you a good day and leave.
We went deep-sea fishing for one day. We rented a boat and captain from a place called Let's Go Fishing. The boat was pretty ratty, but the captain and his young son busted their butts taking us out and trying to find us some fish. We only rented them for a morning ($375 for 5 people) but we didn't catch anything during that time and Eddie the captain offered to take us out for the rest of the day for free. We got some barracuda but not much else, and Eddie offered to take us out the following morning for no extra charge, so he really did try to give us our money's worth. I'd recommend him, if you don't mind a sorta ratty boat.
Food and drink were a lot more costly than I was expecting. If you eat out, plan on spending at least $25-40 per person for dinner, and at least $10-15 for lunch. Breakfast is dirt cheap though, and you can find it for less than $2 if you look around a bit. If you’re going to be staying someplace where you can do your own cooking, I recommend taking your own beef with you to the island, as it’s nearly impossible to find any for sale. You’re allowed to bring in 5.5 pounds per person as long as it’s marked USDA (though admittedly they didn’t check any of our bags on the way in, including the cold-carry bag). One caveat is that you cannot drink the local water as it’s got something in it that even the islanders won’t drink it. But, there is plenty of bottled water available and it’s quite cheap. We were buying 5-gal containers for about $1 so it wasn’t bad. You can shower in the water, but you can’t drink it, so be forewarned.
My boyfriend and I were there for one day longer than the friends we were traveling with, and we rented a 4x4 for a day. We drove all the way out to the east end of the island to old Port Royal (the pirate cove). Roads are dirt track the whole way, and washed out in a lot of places. You do really need a 4x4 to get over there, but we made it and got some pictures.
Nothing to see really, other than a sign saying you've reached Port Royal, and some small shacks and a couple of fishing docks. You can really see why it would make a great pirate cove though, how the reef and the island are laid out. It was a lot of fun to get out there and back. Took us about three hours, but it was totally worth it.
Instead of staying at a self-contained resort, we chose to stay in a private home on the beach, which we rented through a property management company on Roatan. It was a nice house, and with the exception of a few things that didn't work (like the satellite cable/internet) and not being able to get the management company to fix them for us, it was a nice place. There was a 24/7 groundskeeper/maintenance guy in residence next to the property, who spoke no English but worked his butt off all day keeping the beach clean and the dock repaired, etc. All in all we had a great time, and I’d absolutely go back sometime.
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Doing that defeats the point of travel, in my opinion.
