January Offers Red-Hot Discounts for Sun Seekers

Starting about Jan. 5, when New Year’s revelers have returned home, travel to the Caribbean slumps and remains slow until about Jan. 25, when the pace picks up rapidly. The smartest sun seekers choose that short January window for their tropical trips, and their decisions are aided by packagers who cut the air-and-land costs then. Here are my picks of bargains to the Caribbean--plus a bonus to Baja California’s Cabo San Lucas--once the New Year’s crowd has thinned out.

St. Lucia: Though pricier than our usual selections, $1,013 is the lowest rate we’ve seen for a high-season week this winter on St. Lucia, one of the Caribbean’s more expensive and elegant islands.

The price includes round-trip air fare from Los Angeles on Air Jamaica and seven nights at the pleasant Islander Hotel, a five-minute walk (or free shuttle ride) from one of the island’s best beaches. January and the first half of February are the dates.

TourScan, telephone (800) 962-2080, is the source of the atypical (for St. Lucia) budget price.

Venezuela: An all-inclusive week (air fare, hotel, meals, sports) is available in January at Venezuela’s increasingly popular offshore island of Margarita. From Jan. 7 through early February, tour operator Tropical Bargains Inc., tel. (877) 260-6368, will send you there for $934 on American Airlines from Los Angeles. The price (per person, double occupancy) includes a seven-night stay at the Margarita Internacional Village, three meals daily and all sports and recreation.

Blame the still-torpid Venezuelan economy and currency for the packager’s ability to provide so much for little.

Honduras: A week visiting two unscathed areas of this hurricane-ravaged country (in need of tourist dollars) costs as little as $1,000, including round-trip air fare from Los Angeles.

By all accounts, Honduras is bouncing back more quickly than expected from last year’s devastating Hurricane Mitch, but the economic toll remains high.

To jump-start tourism, Central America packager Capricorn Leisure, tel. (800) 426-6544, has designed a six-night visit to two key Honduran sites: Copan, home of some of the most spectacular Mayan ruins anywhere, and the reef-ringed divers’ nirvana of Roatan.

The offer combines two nights at the highly agreeable Marina Copan and a guided tour of the Mayan site, with four nights at Roatan’s Half Moon Bay Cabins and use of the property’s kayaks and snorkeling gear.

The price is good from Jan. 11 through April.

Baja California: A week in one of the Mexican Pacific’s most popular resort destinations, the equivalent of the Caribbean, is available for as little as $570 in January (and not a whole lot more in February).

Fearing another winter slump, Mexico’s hotels are allowing more and more tour packagers to cut prices sharply on air-hotel combos. Thus bargains abound even in such popular places as Los Cabos, that 30-mile-or-so-long strip of towns toward the bottom of Baja California.

A seven-night package from Pleasant Mexican Holidays, tel. (800) 448-3333, bundles round-trip air fare from Los Angeles with lodging at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel. This agreeable resort is dramatically situated on cliffs overlooking the Pacific (with free beach shuttle) in San Jose del Cabo, a sedate, family-oriented town by comparison with party-hearty sibling Cabo San Lucas.

The seven-night rate is $570 per person (double occupancy) from Jan. 4 to Jan. 26, and $620 from Feb. 1 to April 15.