Honduras’ Treasure Island in World of Its Own

Many people on this island claim to know the whereabouts of buried treasure. But no one will dig it up. They believe that if they do, “duppies,” or ghosts that roam the island, will punish them.

Roatan is the largest and most accessible of Honduras’ Bay Islands, which sit about 40 miles off the northern coast in the blue Caribbean, but are so far removed from the rest of Central America they could be on the moon.

Roatan lies on the Spanish Main, the route that gold-laden galleons took from Panama to Havana, then on to Europe. With its plentiful fresh water, oak for repairs and its hidden coves and inlets, the island .made a perfect pirate’s hide-out. Temporary residents over the years included the infamous buccaneers Sir Henry Morgan and John Coxen--the latter’s name is remembered in Roatan’s capital, Coxen’s Hole. Treasure from Morgan’s sacking of Panama in 1671 is rumored to be still hidden on the island.

But until recently, about the only people in the United States who had discovered anything on Roatan were scuba divers venturing beyond the coral reef of Belize, about 100 miles west. The divers liked Roatan’s friendly, laid-back, English-speaking locals, its low prices, clear waters and the pristine reef that is second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Harold Ebright takes visitors on day trips down to Port Royal, the major pirate settlement, in his 46-foot, hand-finished teak sailboat Honky Tonk, and sometimes on longer trips over to Trujillo, the old Spanish capital on the mainland. A former “dirt farmer from Pennsylvania” turned dive master, Ebright has done a lot of research on the pirates and finds himself encouraging his charter passengers to think of Roatan as much more than just a beautiful place to dive.

He tells of a sailor who was captured by the pirates and put to work repairing ships until he escaped to the forested hills above Port Royal. “He wrote about looking down at the camp where several thousand pirates and their families were living. They had some wild parties!”

Today the flat sandy cay where the pirates caroused is guarded by a fluffy, tail-wagging Pomeranian and flocks of peacocks and geese, as well as caretakers who tend the private islet for its present owners.

The three main Bay Islands--Roatan, Utila and Guanaja--were populated by the Paya Indians when Columbus came to call on his fourth and last voyage in 1502. His brother Bartholomew went ashore on Guanaja and returned with the information that the inhabitants were “very robust people who adore idols and live mostly from a certain white grain from which they make fine bread and the most perfect beer.” But the Paya were dragged away by Spanish slavers to work in the Cuban mines in the 16th Century, leaving behind numerous artifacts, from pottery shards to the copper rings that locals call “yaba-ding-dings.”

The Black Caribs, also called Garifuna, are descendants of fierce Carib Indians and shipwrecked African slaves, and were the first permanent settlers of Roatan after the Paya and the pirates had gone. Some 5,000 of them were forcibly removed to Roatan in 1797 by the British planters after an uprising on St. Vincent in the West Indes. Later most were resettled on the mainland around Trujillo.

Candace Hammond, who moved from Farmer, N.C., to Roatan almost five years ago, became fascinated by the Black Caribs and their culture. She has reproduced some of the island dialect, a beguiling mixture of Old English and Caribbean patois, in a booklet called “Wee Speak.”

In the 19th Century, both black and white English-speaking settlers from Grand Cayman began moving to Roatan in great numbers. Over the years, the Bay Islanders were largely left alone and through enterprise and hard work became self-sufficient, operating a highly successful shrimp and lobster business with refrigerated boats.

“We were seafaring people of English and Scottish stock,” explained Allan Hyde, the alcalde or mayor of Roatan and patriarch of one of the island’s three dominant families. “We started the fishing industry and got that going, then we started the shipping business and got that going, and then we started with the diving and got that going a little bit.” He shrugs. “And then the Hondurans started coming here. . . .”

More and more Spanish-speaking ladinos, as mainland Hondurans are called, began migrating to the islands looking for work, so the Bay Islanders learned Spanish. Because the island is governed by Honduras, official signs and schooling are in Spanish, despite the preponderance of English-speakers.

For an island that had no paved roads or telephones and very little electricity only a couple of years ago, Roatan seems to be moving into the mainstream at a rapid rate. In 1989, local entrepreneur Albert Jackson gambled on Roatan’s tourism potential by building Fantasy Island Resort, the island’s first fully air-conditioned hotel, a pretty, two-story peach-and-white place with 50 rooms stretched along a crescent of white sand beach.

There had been several other resorts on Roatan for a decade or more, simple, barefoot places catering to divers, most of whom care little about food, accommodations or after-dinner entertainment. But Fantasy Island was more elaborate than Roatan had seen before, with telephones and color TV, including CNN, in every room, along with refrigerators, ceiling fans and private balconies.

Bob Webster, a native Bay Islander, came home from his Miami post with Continental Airlines to manage the resort. He says a lot of the locals considered the new hotel “too fancy for divers” but apparently had not considered other forms of tourism. Business kept gradually increasing until the end of the Persian Gulf War, when, he says, “suddenly everything took off” and the hotel was full throughout March and April. He said the resort hopes to open 100 more rooms this spring.

During our visit last April, fewer than half the guests were divers. Many sunbathed on the beach or went sailing, snorkeling, windsurfing or canoeing. Typical were a 30ish Salt Lake City couple, James and Angie Elegante--he’s an attorney, she operates a cookie business--who said that while they enjoy diving, they didn’t want to spend their entire vacation under water. So they were combining morning dive trips with afternoon sightseeing tours around the island, then a leisurely dinner at the hotel. Couples and families, most of them from the United States, outnumbered the two small groups of divers, about a dozen each from Upstate New York and Michigan, many making their second or third visit to Roatan.

Meals, included in the package price, were quite good. A copious breakfast buffet ranged from pancakes, bacon and eggs to fried plantains, fresh papaya wedges and banana fritters. Fresh local shrimp, fish or lobster were always on the dinner menu, and a musician played guitar and sang in the bar before and after dinner.

Around the swimming pool, hibiscus and bougainvillea bloom, and a balmy breeze blows through hammocks stretched in the shade of coconut palms. Up near the dive shop, monkeys and parrots chatter in large cages.

We went out one morning in one of the resort’s dive boats with the Elegantes and some of the divers from New York. All made two dives off the dramatic, sheer walls of the reef, only 15 minutes from Fantasy Island. Some had seen manta rays the day before, and all of them talked about the breathtaking coral formations.

“The reef is so pristine here compared to Belize,” one diver told us. “There, I’ve seen dive masters break off a chunk of coral just to throw out to stir up the fish. Here we’re specifically instructed not to touch the coral.”

The resort is one of the leaders in the Bay Islands Environmental Preservation Foundation, which collects $5 from every guest to fund and police the Bay Island Ecological Conservation Zone. In return the guest receives a certificate proclaiming him “a guardian of the 200 mile-year-old Reefs of the Bay Islands.”

One day we rode the island’s only paved road from 15 miles Fantasy Island to West End. We passed Coxen’s Hole, the airport and the town of French Harbor, which lies near the midpoint on the island, which is 33 miles long and two miles wide. A friend was delivering an American electric hair dryer to a woman whose village has no electricity. Asked about that, the woman pointed down the road to some new utility poles in the distance: “Yes, but it’s coming!”

Another day we bounced along a bumpy dirt road on the southeastern side of the island to Oak Ridge, a village of stilt houses connected by canals.

“Need a dory, man?” a voice called out when we wandered over to look at the lively floating banana market. Roatan dories are heavy wooden vessels modeled on old English longboats, and for about $10 it’s possible to tour the canals of Oak Ridge and nearby Jonesville, as well as through a forest of mangroves that form an arch above the water. So much boat traffic passes here that the Mangrove Highway has been designated an official municipal roadway.

The everyday life of Oak Ridge is carried out on the canals. Dories pull up to the lumber store dock to load wood, shoppers tie up by the grocery store, and just about everybody ties up to the pier at a bar such as B.J.’s Backyard for a cold beer and a bit of gossip.

Every household has a door facing the water with a sort of picket fence across the bottom half so no one falls out. Here people sit in the breeze, do household chores or gossip with passersby in boats.

Getting around Roatan is easier than it would appear, with motorbikes, scooters and four-wheel-drive vehicles for rent at the hotel. Sometimes bus tours to Coxen Hole are scheduled; otherwise, the little 15-passenger buses bounce from one end of the island to the other on an easy-going schedule at very modest fares.

One of the New York divers was astonished that we had traveled all over Roatan in a couple of days.

“What else is there to do here except dive?” he said.

GUIDEBOOK

Roatan, Honduras

Where to stay: Fantasy Island Resort vacation packages that include transfers, deluxe lodging, all meals, taxes and tips, plus a welcome cocktail, cost $480 per person, double occupancy, for four nights, $714 for seven nights. Diving packages that include all the above plus three boat dives daily, unlimited beach diving, and one night dive during the stay, including tanks, air, weights, belt and boat trips, cost $624 per person, double occupancy, for four nights, $959 for seven nights. Divers who want a simpler standard room would pay $512 per person, double occupancy, for four nights, $742 for seven nights. The hotel also offers European Plan (no meals) accommodations for $60 double a night, plus $50 for three dives during one day. Call (800) 451-4398 for general resort reservations, (800) 676-2826 for diving packages.

Seagrape Plantation Resort, four new duplex cottages with private baths, porches, and a breezy bar and restaurant, is located on a former coconut plantation at West End. It’s simple, quiet and low-key, with paths neatly defined by chunks of coral and a backdrop of waves crashing against iron rock in what looks like a moonscape of rough black lava. Lodging, transfers and three meals a day cost $40 per person, double occupancy, a day. Seagrape Plantation Resort, West End, Roatan, Honduras C.A., telephone 011-504-45-1428.

Romeo’s Resort, not far from the airport at Brick Bay, is laid out like a big, airy motel with breezy second-floor rooms with ceiling fans, a pool, bar and restaurant, and an emphasis on diving. Hotel-dive packages start at $525 per person, double occupancy, for five nights, and include welcome cocktail, three meals a day, three boat dives a day, two boat night dives a week, transfers, an island tour and a picnic bench party. Certification courses, refresher coursers and follow-up courses are also available. Call (800) 535-3483 for information.

Coco View Resort, reached by shuttle boat from a bridge near Fantasy Island, is great for divers, but for non-divers might be a little isolated. Prices start at $110 a day per person, double occupancy, for non-divers. A seven-day package for divers, including all meals, taxes and two boat-dives daily, costs $675 per person, double. For reservations: P.O. Box 877, San Antonio, Fla. 33576; (800) 282-8932.

Anthony’s Key Resort in Sandy Bay is one of the best-known dive hotels on Roatan, a rambling collection of wooden buildings up a hillside and on a cay across a waterway from the dive shop. It looks attractive and has been highly praised over the years, but we are not in favor of its highly-touted new “swim-with-dolphins” program and therefore hesitate to recommend it. Rooms and meals are simple, rates of around $160 for two with meals payable in U.S. dollars only. For information, call (800) 227-3483.

Where to eat: Besides the hotels, where meals are included on most packages, it’s possible to splurge modestly on huge portions of fresh seafood--giant spider crabs, tender calamari with garlic, Caribbean lobster, shrimp and fish--at Romeo’s Restaurant in French Harbor with its rustic wooden tables lit by gas lanterns beside the water.

In Coxen’s Hole, the funky Hotel El Paso with a rickety wooden patio by the water and a cat that cadges scraps serves delectable Honduran fried chicken, conch chowder and broiled lobster. Service can be slow and few of the servers speak English. While the cluttered little kitchen looks like it would not pass a rudimentary health inspection, we didn’t get sick.

For an evening out, the most fashionable spot on Roatan is the brand-new, air-conditioned Celebrations Restaurant and Disco near French Harbor, built by a young local entrepreneur named Jerry Hines and filled with chic, cool clientele and pulsing light and sound.

To charter the yacht Honky Tonk for a sunset, a day or a live-aboard cruise, contact Harold Ebright, French Harbor Yacht Club, Roatan, Honduras, C.A. U.S. phone: (717) 866-5535

How to get there: See accompanying Guidebook for Copan.