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Roatan, the land of the hammock
By CYNTHIA RUPERT © St. Petersburg Times,
Waiting for a water taxi in a hammock. Waiting for a dive boat in a hammock. Waiting for a papaya daiquiri in a hammock. Waiting becomes an art. Watch the orange flower fall from the poinciana after the hummingbird takes a taste. Feel the cool breeze. Sample fruit from the tree. Listen to new bird songs, an open air church choir, rustling palms and the complete absence of phones. Slowing down and enjoying the surroundings is especially useful while waiting for planes to arrive on Roatan. Both bags and passengers sometimes take unexpected detours through San Pedro Sula, Honduras, or Belize City, Belize, two Central American cities whose airports have connections to the Honduran island. At Half Moon Bay Cabins, Shem sympathetically listens to delayed baggage tales in the open air dining room. Here, as Shem serves delicious food with undying optimism, he calls guests "Captain" or "Princess." "You need no bags," he explains in his musical Caribbean lilt. "It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The world is perfect." The agenda is clear: Snorkel. Scuba dive. Windsurf. But first, explore the island for an overview. A $40-a-day Jeep proves ideal for the 40-mile-long island's main paved road, which winds past several attractions that each cost $5 or less. At the Carambola Botanical Reserve, named for the star fruit, Bill Brady passes out tiny "finger" bananas, fresh cashews and cacao, which looks like garlic cloves and tastes like semisweet chocolate without the sweetness.
Iguanas that roam the garden and the island are called bamboo chicken, he says, and sure enough, I see a local boy carrying an iguana with its legs tied behind its back to make the boy's trek home for dinner less of a struggle. Across the street from the gardens is the Institute for Marine Sciences, where penned dolphins swim with snorkelers and entertain diners at the Dolphin Cafe and visitors to the tiny Roatan Museum. Back on the road, crooked front porches fly by, their obligatory hammocks seeming to smile. A stop at the Iguana Farm outside French Harbour is good for a few minutes of lizard and chicken watching, ditto for the insects at the Roatan Butterfly Garden and the critters at the Tropical Treasures Bird Park. That small attraction started as a refuge for injured and abandoned birds and now is home to several species of toucan, parrot and monkey lala -- a lizard that runs on its hind legs -- and an endangered pair of macaws that stubbornly refuses to mate. At day's end on Half Moon Bay in the village of West End, few of the friendly locals seem to know anything about where to find a sailboard. It is hard to sail around the reef without running aground, they say. It is hard to find parts to keep the rig working. But an American expatriate points to the house of Joel (emphasis on the "el") Ebanks. He has a broken sailboard, but Ebanks says with an encouraging smile that he will try to fix it. The next day, it is time to check out the underwater wildlife. A warmup snorkeling session in Half Moon Bay yields a spotted eel snake, a cocky lobster that seems to know it is in a marine reserve, and the usual fabulously colored Caribbean fish in the usual fabulously designed reefs of elkhorn, barrel and brain coral. A water taxi ride to the top-optional West Bay Beach costs $1.33, or 20 lempiras, a currency named for an Indian chief who lost a war against the Spanish. Natural channels cut through the reef, making underwater highways that help snorkelers navigate the big blue maze. On shore, peacocks with 8-foot-high feather displays strut near the exposed coral, where spotted black iguanas live among spindly palms that clutch the rocks for support. A man pushing a wheelbarrow has iced bottles of soda, and he collects discarded bottles for recycling. Natives in the tourist trade seem especially environmentally conscious on Roatan. When Alvin Jackson finds rope tangled on the coral reef, he carefully winds it up and takes it back to the boat. A dream come true is his Native Sons Water Sports dive business and his hotel room rentals. Two divers from Minnesota are just getting certified and have new equipment and wetsuits that haven't faded yet. Jackson wears an old long-sleeved T-shirt and bleached-out swim trunks, but he compliments the divers on their choice of brands. The underwater world is three-dimensional in a more profound way than life on land, where at least the ground underfoot is solid. You dive in what looks like a sand garden with coral bushes decorated with colorful fish instead of flowers. But a few minutes -- or eternities -- later, the 30-foot-deep garden has dropped straight down into the blue depths from the second-largest coral reef in the world, after Australia's. Divers soar like birds over this vertical wall, which makes 100 feet deep feel like 40 and would turn divers wrong side up if it were not for Jackson's attention to them. Back on board, he talks about needing to see a water horizon from his home. His house above his dive shop has a view of Half Moon Bay, right out to the Caribbean Sea. The leafy green mountain range is his back yard, and he says that without it, he would not feel secure. The wind on the way back to the dive shop from Herbie's Place, a dive spot named for Jackson's brother, is a natural blow dryer. If Roatan had any sidewalks, it would roll them up early. But Papagayo's Fun-Dango Bar and Restaurant, curiously also known as Foster's, stays open later than most places. The swings and hammocks suspended on multilevel docks are a grownup's playground. A macaw and a parrot provide colorful decor, and a local band with a pre-programmed keyboard sings island karaoke with the customers. Another beautiful day, announces Shem, after days have lost their names. It has become just waiting for the dive boat in a hammock by day, and waiting for the sunset in a hammock by evening. Everybody sings Bob Marley while they wait: "Don't worry about a thing, cause every little thing's gonna be all right."
The living swimming pool of Half Moon Bay is so clear there is no danger of running aground on the reef, only of being distracted by friendly cheers from shore. Next morning, the birds are singing. The sun is shining. But the transition back to real time has begun. At the airport, plastic chairs are everywhere, and there's not a hammock in sight. -- Cynthia Rupert is a freelance writer who lives in Tampa. If you goGETTING THERE: A number of airlines, including Continental, Taca, Lacsa and American, fly direct to Roatan from such U.S. cities as New Orleans and Miami. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Check these Web sites: www.exploreroatan.com; www.hondurasrealestate.net/roataninfo.html; www.wunderground.com/global/HO.html; www.roatanonline.com. Some of these sites are commercial in nature but do offer general information and contact phone numbers.
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From the Times Travel page
From the AP |
Near sunset at Joel Ebanks', the sailboard is fixed, a significant piece of the mast held together with plastic twisty ties. Chickens watch him assemble the rig on the beach.
