“I saw the haruca in the forest last night,” he said. I glanced across at his wife, Maria, but she wasn’t smiling. She stayed near to the wood fire on the hearth, rigid and silent. “Walking through the trees,” he added.

I’d never heard the word before, but I could tell it wasn’t good. “Who’s the haruca?” I asked. As usual, he didn’t answer directly. Never give too much away to the gringos, even the friendly ones. They will take it and never bring it back. At last, he said: “It means there will soon be a death in the village.”

During January this year, I lived and worked with an impoverished Lenca Indian family, up in the highlands of western Honduras: José the father, Maria the mother, and their five children, Evelina, Jaime, Benjamin, Alejandro and Hector. Honduras is the poorest country in Latin America. I slept on their floor under blankets. It was very cold. Honduras lies in the tropics, but the Lenca village of Chiligatoro is 6,000ft up, amid pine forests of spectacular beauty. Sometimes, the green fields and brown rolling hills reminded me of Devon.

I got to Chiligatoro by Googling for “volunteer holidays” on the web, which came up with a range of projects from orphanages in Ulan Bator to building work in Honduras. I spoke a bit of holiday Spanish, and knew my Mongolian would never be up to much. So building looked like my best bet.

“Building?” said my girlfriend. “You? You couldn’t even get that bookshelf to stay up.” Honduras it was, then. I clearly had something to prove.

THE BUS from the capital, Tegucigalpa, up to the western highlands boasted a psychedelic paint job, like all Latin American buses, and a girl’s name: Esmerelda. Unfortunately, Esmerelda suffered a series of severe mechanical embarrassments as she wheezed up the precipitous mountain roads, eventually grinding to a complete halt some miles from La Esperanza, so we had to wait to be rescued by the Little Virgin of Suyapa (another bus, not a miracle). From La Esperanza up into the high valleys of the Lenca, we travelled standing in an open cattle truck: a great way to travel for fresh air and a 360- degree view.

I quickly settled in with my gentle, smiling, soft-spoken family. For breakfast, we ate tortillas and beans. For lunch, tortillas and beans. And for supper — you’re ahead of me. On special occasions, I got an egg. I was often hungry, often chilly, always physically exhausted by the evening. It was one of the happiest months of my life.

The Lenca Indians live high in the mountains, as far from the latinos as possible. They grow maize, beans, a few potatoes. They have innumerable beautiful, barefoot children, live in low-slung, thatched, whitewashed cottages, and their climate is often cool, damp and misty. Spending time with them gives you some idea of how rural life in Ireland might have been before the famine: exuberant, communal, Catholic and deeply superstitious.

At dawn we’d trek up into the forest. Hummingbirds flashed in the bright air and waterfalls tumbled down from the high hills. The deep, sun-burnished bracken reminded me of Exmoor in October, or Golden Virginia tobacco. We’d find a glade and start to cut down saplings with the one-and-only machete we had between us. It often went missing. Hector, aged five, was “playing” with it. José just laughed. Then we’d shoulder the saplings in tandem and carry them back to the cottage, a grueling 40 minutes. By now, the sun was climbing straight up into the tropical sky and the mist was steaming off the low valleys. We’d work until 12 and then stop.

At four we could start again. We split the saplings length ways and nailed them to uprights, then dug a trench deep in the rich, red earth, poured in bucketfuls of water from the stream, and the bare-legged children gleefully trampled it into a gloppy quagmire. Then we knelt and scooped up double handfuls of the heavy, wet clay, and slapped them in between the split logs. It was back-breaking work.

And then tortillas and beans, and nightfall. The fire would burn low, the temperature fall dramatically. There was no glass in the windows, no electricity or candlelight, nothing but the brilliant stars. Orion lay on his side at these latitudes, but I’d be too tired to work out why. I’d pull my blankets around me and slump to one side. It might only be 8 or 9pm in the brightly lit cities of the world down below, but here it was time to sleep. I’d be up at 5am tomorrow.

ONE DAY, I asked Evelina, 11, their only daughter, if she got a present for Christmas.

She smiled shyly, looking down at her bare feet in the cold mud. She swung from side to side at the waist, her hands behind her back.

“Well,” she said. “I wanted a new T-shirt, but we haven’t any money to buy clothes. So mama bought us some Doritos.” A big grin, then: “They were lovely!” To buy her children a bag of Doritos for Christmas, this is what Maria must do: she has to go out into the fields and dig up some potatoes. Then she will carry them on her bent back in a cacaxte, a wickerwork basket, for half an hour up the steep winding path out of the valley to the red dirt track. There she will wait, perhaps in the rain, for two, maybe three hours, until she can catch a lift on a passing truck. The driver might charge you 3 lempira (9p) for the ride into town, but he will let Maria travel for free. Half an hour standing in the back of the open cattle-truck, groaning up hills and lurching through potholes, until they reach the little town of La Esperanza.

There Maria will find a place on the pavement amid the other market traders, and she will try to sell her potatoes. On a good day she might make as much as 100 lempira (£3), but usually more like 40 or 50. Then she will be able to go to the supermercado and buy a bag of Doritos for her five children for Christmas. She will spend the rest on a bag of rice, some salt, perhaps some tomatoes. Finally, she might go into the church and pray for the health of her family, and put the last of her coins into the outstretched plaster hand of the statue of the Little Virgin of Suyapa. And then the long, long journey home again.

The children have heard of chocolate, and how delicious it is. Indeed, their Mayan ancestors invented it. But nowadays it all goes abroad, to the rich gringos. They have never tasted it. But still, Doritos — salted maize chips made in Mexico — are a wonderful Christmas present in Chiligatoro.

They were the kindest, gentlest people I’ve ever met. Not once in that month did I hear a voice raised in anger, and the thought of José or Maria slapping their children was inconceivable. The day I left, looking proudly over the new bodega that I’d helped to build, so sad to be going and so longing for home, they smiled their gentle smiles and murmured, “Que te vaya con Dios”. Hector clung to my leg and begged me to take him to England. He knew there was chocolate there. I just laughed and turned away and swallowed.

I wish I could have stayed in touch with them, but there’s no electricity, no telephones, no postal service there. And if I did write a letter, they couldn’t read it. Even the water in Chiligatoro only comes from the stream off the hills, tasting of rocks and pines. So I say to them vayan con Dios. And may the haruca not haunt their woods again.

-Christopher Hart

Up in these hills there are many aldeas and caserios (very small communities – often no bigger than a few houses), some connected by a network of bumpy, rocky, dirt roads (often I find the term “road” to be a bit of a stretch). These “roads” are frequently close to impassable and often turn to roaring rivers in the rainy season. The families who live in the caserios that dot these hillsides mostly live at the margins of subsistence, living off the beans and corn they plant along the steep hillsides and sometimes supplemented with illegal timber extraction.

There is little to no work and several times when I’ve visited some isolated settlements their school isn’t open because they can’t keep a teacher. Access to a market is difficult (often requiring long journeys on foot or horseback to the nearest dirt road where they can pick up a bus), so selling any products they may have is nearly impossible, and they often have to sell to middle-men who don’t give them a fair price. Wealthier people also live in these hills or at least own land, and they are mostly involved in cattle-ranching (and perhaps some other illicit activities, so I’ve heard). Cattle-ranching often has a significant environmental impact and pushes farmers higher into the hills, clearing land for crops.

On the other side of the highway, stretching out towards the sea, the land flattens into more fields of pineapples and African Palm. Along the coast there are many beaches, and once there were vast tracts of mangrove forests, which can still be found in some parts of the department. Some communities are only accessible by boat. Artesanal fishing is a primary subsistence economic activity along the coast, and Atlántida is known for its fantastic lobster, shrimp and fresh fish. Some fishers sell their products to restaurants or in neighborhoods (every morning a man with coolers strapped to his bike rides through our neighborhood yelling “llevo langosta, filete, camarones!” – “I have lobster, fish, shrimp!”), but many fishers must also sell to middle-men.

Many people from these small communities find work in the pineapple, banana or African palm plantations owned by large companies such as Standard Fruit/Dole (which got its start here in La Ceiba). People I’ve spoken to have said this work is usually for three-month stretches and is very difficult, heavy work, often under the blazing sun.

I don’t know much about the chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides used on these crops, but I understand they are quite damaging to the environment and people who work in or live near the plantations. Plantations occupy the majority of the flat, fertile land in Atlántida, which is the land closest to the highway and thus closest to transportation and market access.

Driving along the main highway – and many of its branches – through the department, the fields of mono-crops (pineapple is most common around La Ceiba) seem to go on for miles. Mono-crops are notoriously detrimental – often disastrous – to land and the environment. As fertility is stripped from the soil, increasing amounts of energy inputs are required to maintain production, and crops are left exposed and vulnerable to disease and infestations that can wipe them out entirely. Coconut, a major crop here, has been devastated by lethal yellowing, a disease that affects palms.

There is much to see and learn by driving along this main artery of Atlántida – and even more to see and learn by getting off the highway. This is just a simple sketch, based on my own observations and conversations. In many ways, this highway represents the complexities and challenges the people of Honduras’s coast face.

Written by Shannon Clohosey, who is working in La Ceiba, on the north coast of Honduras, with LAC-Net, the Latin American and Caribbean Model Forest Network.

I smile sympathetically, “No comprendo . . . lo siento,” while gesturing to tell her that I am sorry, but I don’t understand her.

She laughs, used to this response, and mimes for me to come with her. At this, I follow my new Honduran friend across the field — my pasty-white, 17-year-old legs trying to keep up with her experienced seven-year-old ones.

We cross the orange clay soccer field and come upon a dirt hut. Faviole smiles at me, and shouts something in Spanish to the lady inside the hut. The woman emerges from the hut with a glass of water in hand, and offers it to us. This simple gesture, requesting a glass of water from a barely known neighbour, is commonplace to Faviole. Yet to me, a product of western culture, it is a gesture of surprise.

The glass of water, for me, has become a metaphor of the Honduran attitude. It illustrates the sense of community and simple happiness that these people possess. When I first arrived, the poor clay huts, the hungry barefoot children and the dilapidated rusty vehicles shocked me. I had trouble seeing around the poverty.

However, after spending mere hours in the presence of the people, I began to feel the presence of a vibrant community spirit that we in North America sometimes forget about. The people are friendly and wave a genuine hello to complete strangers while passing by in their old pickups. The children are free and dash wherever their feet happen to take them. The workers are relaxed and take their time finishing their jobs. It is a community where happiness comes from the simple things in life. For this, I believe we cousins of the north have a thing or two to learn.

And learn we can from this impoverished community. The Honduran people, particularly the children, have a lot to teach us about simple happiness. Their neighbourhoods are slums with no running water, yet they run laughing through the streets playing tag. Their walk home from school takes more than an hour, yet they still find the enthusiasm to embrace learning each morning. Their meals sometimes come only once a day, yet they find it in themselves to share with another hungry friend. It is this will to live and be simply happy that I admire.

I find it sad that we have lost this simple happiness in our western culture. We do not let our children run through the neighbourhoods for fear of kidnappers or pedophiles. We groan and moan about waking up for school every morning because we don’t realize the privilege of having accessible education. We refrain from asking our neighbours for a glass of water when we are thirsty, merely due to the sad fact that we don’t know them.

Now, I am not saying that we should all let go of the material wealth we enjoy, that we should all move and live in clay huts and that we should all barge into our neighbour’s house asking for a glass of water, because that is not the point. I am also not saying that Hondurans have a carefree easy life, for this is definitely not true. What I am saying is that we should stop and think before we begin to feel pity for these people. We need to re-evaluate what is important to us and think about how fortunate we really are. We ought to adopt the ”glass of water” attitude.

ALISON GOULDEN

So we are here, my husband, our little Maltese dog and me. We came down to visit this Central American beauty for our birthday celebrations, only two days apart.

I am sitting in the living room of our little bungalow on the ocean, only steps from the water. Yesterday, I tried to figure out how far we really were from the water, probably under a hundred steps, but down here in Guanaja
things like that are not all that important. What matters most is that as I sit on the couch there is no need for art work because Mother Nature has provided a stunning show piece! The pristine clear waters of the Caribbean Sea are right at my door step.

The sounds are and smells are spectacular, also. When the gentle waves caress the shoreline it brings back childhood memories of going to the beach and listening for hours to the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean, this, for me is a relaxing sound. It is better than any music I have ever heard. The slightly briny smell of the salt water is like perfume. In the far distance I can hear a fishing boat making its way out to work for the day. The throbbing of the diesel engines can be heard a long way over the water. For me, this is paradise.

Morning comes early here. I guess, because we are closer to the equator, the days begin early here, in fact the rooster starts to crow at 4:30am. The crowing is the signal that the inky black sky with the dazzling stars will begin to fade, and the sky will start to turn gentle pastel colors, until the fiercely bright sun rises out of the sea to begin a new day. What more do you want out of life?

I know that some people thrive on the hustle and bustle of the big city life. They love the intense rushing about and the noise of the city, the smells of big industry, but not me. Give me the peaceful sound of the ocean surf, the gentle colors of the Caribbean sky, salt air and the camaraderie of good friends. The wonderful pictures that Mother Nature gives us, is all that I need to feel at one with the world.

A sunrise in Guanaja Honduras is priceless. It is something that only a few very privileged people ever get to experience. Get on an airplane in Miami and a couple of hours later you will be in this tropical paradise to see for yourself.

By the way, you know that rooster that crows at 4:30 am? I think I am going to have a chat with that bird and maybe order chicken for dinner tonight!

by Denise Clarke

Denise, a retired paramedic is now turning her energies to writing, blogging, photography and internet research.

Semana Santa, otherwise known as Holy Week, begins on what is commonly known as Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday.
This being said, it is also the unofficial spring break for the entire country; schools close, stores shut their doors and taxi drivers take their taxis to their pueblos to visit friends and family.
I began Semana Santa by travelling to La Ceiba, a city on the northern coast of Honduras to visit some friends living there. There’s a saying in Honduras that states: “Tegucigalpa thinks, San Pedro Sula works and La Ceiba celebrates.”
With the easy-going attitude of the locals, at least the ones I met, it was easy to believe such a saying.

Besides eating fish, and lots of it, while in La Ceiba, I took a trip to the community of Sambo Creek to take a small boat to an island a few miles off shore.
On this island, Chachahuate, live a community of Garifuna, an ethnic group of Honduras whose ancestors are believed to have come from Western Africa.

Since everyone leaves Tegucigalpa and comes to the north coast for Semanta Santa, I decided to travel in the opposite direction: from La Ceiba to Tegucigalpa.
A few years ago, I spent a summer volunteering at a non-profit clinic in Tegucigalpa and lived at a nearby seminary. I was eager to return to the seminary where I had made many friends, even though I knew that many of them had left the capital for Semana Santa. As expected, when I arrived, most of the taxi drivers had left the city as had most of its inhabitants.

I have learned that true friends are those who, even though you haven’t seen each other in years, can start all over again at first glance as if no time had ever passed since the last visit.
And those friends I made in Honduras many years ago are those type of friends. We spent Thursday visiting the nearby towns of Santa Lucia and Valle de Angeles, known for their artesenias, or souvenirs. Popular Honduran souvenirs include ornately carved, mahogany boxes and black and white pottery after the style of the Lenca Indians.

In honor of Good Friday, we travelled to the center of the city where many of the streets were covered with alfombras, paintings made of sawdust depicting various religious scenes that lead to the Catholic Cathedral in the central park.

Almost an hour passed as I wandered from street to street, mesmerized by the intricate designs of these temporary sawdust works of art and the workers who labored diligently to create and maintain them.
Though not of the Catholic faith, I couldn’t help but appreciate the workers’ faith and dedication as they spent their few days of vacation kneeling on the hot, hard pavement of Tegucigalpa to create a piece of beauty that would soon be trampled and swept away within a few hours.

It made me reflect on my own faith and beliefs and whether or not I was dedicated enough to my beliefs to give up one of the few days of my vacation to participate in something that would help others understand and appreciate that which I believed and valued.

That night, my friends and I shared a typical dish of Semana Santa, fish soup. Have I mentioned that fish is a popular food during this week?
Food, friends and family, faith, and of course, fish. It was definitely a Spring Break I soon won’t forget.

-Michele Gourley

Completing accommodation arrangements was the toughest part of the trip; the entire island lost internet service Jan. through March.

We took the ferry from La Ceiba, arriving without reservations but found out that there are many lodging sites. We chose a combination package with Cross Creek, staying in a duplex bungalow and taking our class work and dives through their school. This resort is mainly geared for lower budget travelers and those interested in obtaining certifications from open card to dive master. The instruction was very organized and thorough.

This is not a good operator if you are expecting an extensive fish\coral ID tour with each dive; the instructors and instructor-trainees are too busy teaching skills to their students. Safety is a high priority and we couldn’t complain about that. The variety and numbers of fish seen was less than in some other Caribbean sites, but the coral growth\variety is superb.

Excellent site for inexpensive advanced training.

My StumbleUpon Page

On the way, we passed a town that rose out of the sea on posts. This was Bonacca, the island’s capital, a town that outgrew two tiny cays, forming a 17 acre stilt village. It was christened a “little Venice of the Caribbean” by author Jane Houlson (Blue Blaze, 1934).

Past Bonacca, the coast grew even more dense and mysterious. Huge outcrops of volcanic rock jutted between white sand beaches crowded with coconut palms. Behind, lush hillsides arched upward toward pine topped mountains.

Just when all signs of human habitation seemed behind us, a Spanish villa peeked out of the greenery. I had been here before and knew what to expect, but the other guests onboard were in for a surprise.

I have found a most pleasant mixture of nature and development in Guanaja, at a place where there are many miles of wilderness reef tract and a resort that looks as if it popped off the pages of Architectural Digest. The impression presented by Posada del Sol’s mainhouse is of a mansion in the jungle. The handsome two story structure has an exterior of beige stucco, a red-tiled roof with accents and an interior of native hardwoods. Inside is the resort’s social focus - a beautiful restaurant with high cathedral ceiling, a charming indoor/outdoor bar, reading and TV lounge, a registration/information desk and a boutique/gift shop.

The outdoor patio forms the roof of the beachside guest wing and the floor of the poolside guest wing. A third villa/guest wing is hillside, a short walk away. The wooden patio surrounds a swimming pool and includes an outdoor restaurant for breakfast, lunch and snacks. Guest rooms are spacious and richly appointed with hardwood furnishings, tile floors, marbled bathrooms, slatted windows and ceiling fans. Outside, stone pathways lead through groves of fruit and flower trees, past tennis courts and picnic area, to the marina and dive shop. Also at the marina is a guests wet storage, a photo/video shop and a complete workout center. A fleet of well maintained mid-sized boats is poised to take small groups of divers to dive sites.

Once the private villa of an eccentric millionaire, Posada del Sol was discovered and converted into a complete dedicated dive resort by George Cundiff. A former entrepreneur in the field of commercial diving, Cundiff had previously owned and designed an impressive dive resort in the Cayment Islands. Now, on Guanaja, and with Posada del Sol, he found his personal “Shringri-La”, and it is available for all to share.

Excellent diving, and beautiful accommodations were what I experienced. I highly recommend Guanaja to any world traveler with a taste for both natural and man-made beauty.

Submitted by Jenn, written by Becki Gall

by Michele Gourley

He then let me go and all at once I was flying through the treetops at Gumba Limba Park in Roatan, Honduras. I really enjoyed this great adventure, even though, after my canopy tour, a very impolite monkey stole my water bottle out of my back pack.

There’s nothing better than learning something new while traveling, learning about ancient and unknown worlds, lose myself in nature and exercise, and be pampered in total relaxation. Honduras offers all of this and a lot more.

Honduras is one of the most naturally beautiful and least explored areas of Central America according to Moon Handbooks and other travel guides. The Mesoamerican Reef, just off its Caribbean coast, is the second-largest coral reef in the world, offering some of the best diving and values in the Caribbean.

I learned to dive on Roatan thirty years ago. I took a short flight from la Ceiba on the mainland, to the island’s dirt runway, sharing a tiny plane filled with missionaries, the door held shut with a wire hanger.

This time, thirty years later we arrived at the Roatan International Airport and entered the air-conditioned terminal. Roatan has become a destination of choice, no longer just for divers and backpackers, but for vacationers, including many honeymooners, from North America and around the world.

Arriving on Roatan, directly from San Francisco, we allowed ourselves a few days to decompress at the Henry Morgan, a full service resort on Roatan’s most popular beach in West Bay.

Roatan is the largest and most developed of the three Bay Islands. There is superb diving on more than 40 dive sites around the islands, a number of full service resorts, as well as hotels in different price ranges. Cruise ships now stop at this beautiful island. In addition to diving, there are lots of activities such as Glass-bottom boat rides, fishing, hiking, snorkeling, biking, dolphin shows, shopping visits to an iguana farm and more.

The Island of Guanaja, sometimes referred to as the “Venice of Central America” because of its network of canals, is the second largest of the Bay Islands and is where Columbus landed in 1502 and European pirates like Henry Morgan and John Coxen set up home bases for their raids on Spanish ships in the 1600s. Today, Henry Morgan is an upscale resort on Roatan and the town Coxen’s Hole is named after John Coxen.

The third of the Bay Islands and the closest to shore is Utila, reportedly the least expensive place to get your dive certification and home to whale sharks, the world’s largest fish.

I always search for adventures a bit off the beaten track. Someone mentioned an island 30 kilometers off the coast that had only one small resort and very few people. We immediately decided to investigate. Its name, Cayos Cochinos, or Hog Island, hails from the days when pirates put their pigs there and stopped back occasionally for a barbecue. Part of a group of two small islands and 12 minuscule sand cays, the Honduran government declared it a marine reserve in 1993, and for several years the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute managed it.

Forty minutes of gliding through the waves delivered us to the pristine shore of the Plantation Beach Resort. The manager welcomed us with a cool tropical drink.

The 12 room resort, built of mahogany and local stone on more than four hectares of virgin tropical forest, appeals to nature lovers as well as world-class divers. After a delicious lunch of fresh fish cakes, coleslaw, potato salad and still-warm chocolate chip cookies prepared lovingly by the Plantation Beach’s creative chef, I was drawn to the red, orange and yellow Maya hammock that swings in the trade winds under palm trees. Water lapped on the white sandy beach. An occasional wind chime tinkled. I was home.

That evening during a dinner of baked chicken in a lovely sauce, fried eggplant and a birthday cake that the chef baked for me, having learned that it was my birthday, the manager pointed out that you don’t have to be a diver to enjoy Cayos Cochinos. There are also other activities such as snorkeling, kayaking, hiking and photography.

However, my husband and I are both divers. On our first dive of the day, there were only four of us, in addition to the boat captain and our dive guide, on the spacious and well-equipped dive boat. Exxon, our guide, readied my gear and lifted my tank onto my back. I looked forward to the cool water, a refreshing contrast to the warm, humid air.

One step off the boat and it all came back to me: The comfort of weightlessness, the gentle water, the undulation of sea fans. And we saw so much more on this dive and subsequent ones during our time on Cayos Cochinos: The luminescence of blue barrel coral, the elegant yellow and blue Queen Angel with her crown, the surprise of seeing a large turtle or a giant ray soaring past, a lonely barracuda, enormous lobsters and, on our last dive, one of my favorites, the spotted drum fish, looking like a small black and white circus horse tossing the fancy plume on her tiny head.

On most days the sea was calm with about 23 metres visibility. It can’t get any better than this for an island dive experience. Even though, someone would occasionally warn: “That gecko’s in the sugar bowl again!”

After one morning dive, we visited the small Garifuna village of Chachahuate, a 30-minute boat ride away, on a tiny cay. The Garifuna people are descendants of escaped slaves from a wrecked slave ship in 1635 that mixed with the local Carib people. Their culture, language and music drums, and punta dance, all derive from African roots.

We ended our trip with a visit to The Lodge at Pico Bonito, a luxury eco-lodge and member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World. We stayed in one of the 22 cabins in their gorgeous location on the Corinto River at the foot of the slopes of Pico Bonito National Park on the Caribbean coast, just 15 minutes from la Ceiba International Airport.

By Diane LeBow

On your worst days when you fantasize about escaping to a movie-set-perfect tropical island, Roatan would do nicely. Still largely undeveloped for tourism, it’s a laid-back, pristine, breathtaking speck of Earth that attracts backpackers, divers and, increasingly, mainstream Americans as it begins to make it onto the vacation radar.

So, undoubtedly, it will change. But for now, it’s still an amalgamation of privately owned small beachfront inns with mosquito netting suspended over the beds, ceiling fans languidly distributing the balmy air and the transparent aquamarine Caribbean Sea just feet away.

Roatan, 33 miles long and 4 miles wide, is one of three islands making up the Bay Islands. It is 30 miles off the coast of Honduras. Despite the lack of commercialism, it’s surprisingly accessible from the U.S. in just less than three hours.

On a brilliantly sunny day when the color of the water resembles a swimming pool — only with a coral reef and tropical fish — I’m sitting in a palapa-covered restaurant shack that is supported on stilts above the water in the funky town of West End. I’m plenty hot, and that crystalline water is looking awfully good.

But I’ve forgotten my swimsuit. So fully clothed, I pad down the wooden stairs and drop into the tranquil sea; nobody seems to notice or care. Eventually, I pad back up the steps and, dripping seawater on the wood floor, head out onto the one-lane dirt road to a pastel-colored hut that’s selling T-shirts and shorts. Within minutes, I’m outfitted in dry clothes for $15 and ready for a lunch of just-caught steamed red snapper, rice and beans and fried plantains for $5. An ice-cold bottle of beer is 50 cents. It doesn’t get any better than this.

An easy 10-minute water-taxi ride away is the town of West Bay and what some consider the most beautiful beach in the world. There is a smattering of the more traditional resort-style hotels, such as the Mayan Princess, one of the few accommodations on the island to have a swimming pool.

I meet Oscar Escobar, a tour operator who runs day outings to the mostly deserted out islands. I sign up for a tour. The next day, we leave in an eight-person motorboat pointed into open ocean, past splotches of land sticking up above the sea, to Cayos Cochinos. It is made up of two densely palm-and-fern covered islands and 13 cays, all declared a biological reserve.

After snorkeling and swimming, we have lunch on a blip of land inhabited by the Garifuna people, a separate ethnicity from the Latin population of Honduras.

The Garifuna derive from Africa, where they were captured as slaves intended for the New World in 1635. Their ship, however, wrecked on the reefs near the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Survivors fled and mixed with Carib Indians, creating a culture and language. Generations later, they were forced off the island by the British and relocated in and around Roatan.

Lunch provided by this group of about 20 occupying the island consisted of a lobster just plucked from the ocean for each visitor and several side dishes served on wooden tables at the edge of the water. The meal runs around $6.

For another side trip, I take a 15-minute flight aboard a puddle-jumper to the mainland of Honduras for a stay at the eco-lodge Pico Bonito. It is at the rim of the national park by the same name, a wild primordial rain forest filled with foliage, birds and wildlife. The Lodge at Pico Bonito is a member of the upscale Small Luxury Hotels of the World, and each of the 22 cabins is constructed of mahogany jalousie windows, varnished hardwood floors and wooden vaulted ceilings harvested from the surrounding jungle.

It is, appropriately, raining when I arrive at the rain forest. Giant banana leaves drip water, trees pregnant with cacao pods drop their fruit, sumptuous red bromeliads glisten in the muted light, and the whole place smells earthy and exotic.

The next morning, the sun is shining. I eat breakfast at the lodge house and sit on the wide veranda in an oversized upholstered rattan chair, taking in the view before hiking into virgin mountainous rain forest.

FYI:
Several airlines fly from Richmond International Airport to Roatan, Honduras, with connecting flights (change of plane). Round-trip fares start around $850. Delta Airlines provides direct service into Roatan from Atlanta. Continental Airlines flies direct from Houston.

By JANINE S. POULIOT