Diamond in the Rough
I just had breakfast with a monkey.
Of course, that’s what my girlfriend says almost every morning. But in this case it’s a white-faced spider monkey, who has come down from his perch 10 metres above to join me.
It’s my last day on the island and the first time I had seen him, clambering from tree to tree, branch to branch, and, finally, on to the shaded patio table of the beach-front apartment I had rented.
At first, I left a piece of banana and watched from behind a screened door as he scampered down, snatched it and raced back up. The second time I waited outside. The third, I sat at the table, me eyeing him and he eyeing me, until, like a sweet-toothed child, he could resist no more.
Trust, unfortunately, lasted only as long as my bananas and before long he left for further handouts somewhere else down the beach.
While it would be a lie to suggest wild monkeys intermingle freely with tourists, it is not a stretch to say that for all of its burgeoning development – and make no mistake this verdant Caribbean paradise, 50 kilometres off the coast of Honduras, is in the midst of explosive growth – Roatan is still largely the beach-fringed rainforest first discovered by Columbus and then almost 500 years later, by scuba-diving commandos.
There are still no traffic lights. The lone paved road, snaking its way from spectacular West Bay beach, past the airport, before turning back just two-thirds of the way up the 50-kilometre island, only received a centre yellow line two years ago. The first sidewalks – in the scruffy, but typically Central American, capital of Coxen Hole – are just now being poured. By hand.
Public transportation largely amounts to contruction workers hopping on and off the bed of a pickup truck, meaning finding your way around is best left to a) renting a jeep and bravely contemplating the fate that might greet you around the next bend or b) taking a taxi and bravely contemptating the fate the might greet you around the next bend.
This is still a place where you can watch a Caribbean sunset over $1 happy-hour beers and where a vast lobster dinner is less than the cover charge in Toronto’s Entertainment District.
It is a place of character and charm; Grand Cayman before the bankers and Cozumel before the cruise ships.
For scuba divers, of course, this is old news. It is, after all, part of the second-biggest barrier reef in the world, home to an incredible array of the earth’s marine life. More than 100 established dive sites dot a thriving eco-system, in water of indescribable tranquility, clarity and hue.
Even better, some of the best diving – and snorkelling – is just 50 metres from your doorstep, a kaleidoscope of sea life, from sergeant majors to grunts to parrot fish.
On one dive – for the insanely low price of $35 – we went a little further out, descending to just 10 metres and navigating our way through a garden of stunning coral mountains, before suddenly the reef plummeted into a deep, blue abyss.
“The whole island’s like that,” Luis, our dive master, explains back on the boat.
Along the vibrant wall, a grouper about the size of a refrigerator, coasts by, trailed by a two-metre moray eel slithering between the crevices. Giant sea turtles are common and divers back at the shop are still buzzing over the hammerhead shark one group spied a couple of days ago.
Around 8 a. m. any given morning, scuba tanks are propped up in the white, sugary sand, awaiting the divers and their transport.
This is also when a few small fishing boats – bearing such ironic names as Queen Mary – pull up to the beach, owners promising to bring home a prize barracuda and more.
One of them was stretched out in his canopied 16-footer when I stopped by. Its owner offered a gnarled hand and introduced himself as Capt. Brooks.
“Been patrolling the waters for 14 years,” he says, and offers me a half-day with two guests for $60.
He’s quick to show off the scar left on his lure, a 15-centimetre Rapala hung on wire line, a day earlier. “A wahoo” he says. “Must have been 40 pounds.”
If it’s the really big fish you’re after, those outside the reef, you might want visit in October, which is when the island hosts a deep-sea fishing tournament that will see 181-kilo blue marlin reeled in with regularity. Nearby is also migratory route of whalesharks, the largest fish in the sea, drawing divers from around the world.
But against this bucolic backdrop has arrived a force so sinister that even hardened capitalists are left shaking their heads: A loud, coral-crunching, burger-devouring, rum-soaked species previously seen only in Cuba and Dominican Republic. Yes, the snowbird.
The island may be getting rich by them but, according to some, the culture poorer.
Travelling up the coast, to places like Flowers Bay and French Harbour, you can overlook construction of the island’s first golf course, a Pete Dyedesigned number called The Black Pearl.
The day’s laundry still flaps in the breeze and the average annual salary may be $400, but it’s no longer just a rumour that a Wendy’s restaurant is coming to the island’s first mall -down the road from the two $30-million cruise ship terminals nearing completion during my visit.
A duty-free port will do that for you. Even the Wall Street Journal calls Roatan the Carribean’s new “it” spot.
This is an island in which almost all of the 50,000 inhabitants not only speak English, they speak it well. And for all of its poverty, Wi-Fi is available throughout – even on the beach.
Nowhere is the incongruity more evident than in West End, the bohemian village at the point of the island – and an eight-minute ride by water taxi from the main beach -where barefooted backpackers intersperse with white-legged seniors from the cruise ship.
Here, dive shops compete with souvenir stands, where you can get a room across from the dock for $28 a night – including breakfast.
It is a village where the biggest debate is whether or not to pave the main drag and fill the potholes – actually more like craters – once and for all. The no crowd – probably led by a lobby of auto mechanics and dentists – appears to be winning.
This is also the home of the “commando” divers, easily recognized by the joyous smiles on their faces and miniature laptops on their wrists.
At dusk, they meet at places such as Sundowners, reliving a day that would make Jimmy Buffett giddy.
This conflict between old and new should surprise no one, for Roatan is used it. For hundreds of years the island changed hands between the Spanish, the pirates – Henry Morgan among them used the island as a watering hole and booty stash – the British, the Spanish again and now a democratically aligned Honuduras. But this battle is something new.
On the day we left, Roatan was abuzz: Three cruise ships – two forced to wait offshore and jetty their passengers in – had pulled up for the first time.
So, as the world discovers their little secret, the locals, like the foreign divers used to having the place to themselves, watch with unease. The former will probably accept it for the potential it offers.
The latter? They will probably fill my tank with helium and smother my snorkel with Krazy glue just for writing this.
Posted By JIM WILSON, SUN MEDIA