by Gale Randall

onduras has a lot to offer the visitor: the incredible Mayan ruins of Copán and nearby colonial town of Copán Ruinas; a verdant unspoiled countryside; and the idyllic Caribbean Bay Islands of Roatán, Utila, and Granaja. After a few days spent exploring Copán and charming Copán Ruinas, my friend and I decided to kick back a while on Roatán, the largest and most developed of the Bay Islands. To reach Roatán — some 30 miles off the Honduran coast — we boarded two short flights, from San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba and from there to Roatán.

We talked about … a swamp tour, a swim with dolphins or visiting an iguana farm.

Visiting Roatán during the high winter season, we were lucky to find a room at Paradise Beach Club at West Bay, the island’s most popular resort area. The PADI-certified Beach Club offers a choice of hotel rooms, villas and penthouses (our attractive room, with all amenities, including a safe, ran $90 a night — pretty good for February in the Caribbean). Here we settled into a routine of sorts — most mornings my friend took off for diving expeditions off Roatán’s coast while I wandered about taking photographs, swimming in the hotel pool and gentle surf at our beach, and plowing through a stack of current best-sellers. After the dives, he would return quite excited by the marine life he’d glimpsed around Roatán’s amazing barrier reef — enormous black grouper, angelfish, blue parrotfish, barracuda, lobster and crab — vowing to return some day with a waterproof cover for his digital camera.

We also tried snorkeling and talked about signing up for an island excursion — a swamp tour, a swim with dolphins or visiting an iguana farm. Somehow, though, we never made it to these activities. We’d often lunch at laidback Cabaña Roatána next door, where we got to know the gal who ran its drink stand. From British Columbia, she’d followed her parents to Roatán after they bought property on the island — a trend we found all over Honduras.

Sporting two talkative parrots and a family of friendly orange cats, the Beach Club has a good restaurant, offering seafood and typical Central American fare — plantains, fajitas and platos típicos — a lot like Mexican food. It would get pretty lively some evenings, with folk singers entertaining on one occasion and a troupe of Garifuna dancers another night. Adding to the international mix, the resort was run by an Italian married to a Costa Rican, and a comical group of Italians were currently in residence.

When our cab to the airport didn’t show up, Rico, the resort’s charming manager, drove us himself — very typical of the hospitality we found here. The airport was a hive of activity — student groups, Honduran families and amateur archaeologists headed to unknown destinations.

Paradise Beach Club: tel. 800/291-0288; www.roatanvillas.com.

Gale Randall is a freelance travel writer based in Palo Alto, California.

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