Roatan, Honduras

Empty Beaches in the Off-Season

September 12, 2015

- Of Monsters and Men

It wasn’t exactly easy to get to Roatan from Cartagena but after a short flight to Bogota, a long layover there, a pre-dawn flight to El Salvador, and a one hour propeller-driven plane flight, I finally arrived. From the small airport it was a 15-20 minute ride along some pothole riddled roads to get to West Bay, a small beach community on the southwestern tip of the island.

Besides some small housing developments perched along the steep and forested slopes, West Bay consists of a string of hotels and restaurants around the crescent shaped beach. There is a single shopping plaza set back from the beach along the singular road through the town. Most of life in the town appears to take place on the beach. During the daytime vendors hawk crafts, boat trips, water taxi rides, tours, and nearly everything else; people take in the sun from beach chairs and play in the water, and water taxis ferry people to and from West End, a village several miles to the north. At night people walk from hotels to restaurants and vice versa and crabs scurry across the beach under a canopy of brilliant stars.

Fortunately, my visit happened to be during the beginning of low season. With the exception of one day when a cruise ship was in port, nearly everything was strangely deserted. This was very nice in that the crowds that normally fill the restaurants and beaches were largely absent and this probably translated into a lot fewer and their harassing sales pitches. The downside to this was that it was difficult to find any tours, other than the standard tour, because there simply weren’t enough tourists to form groups large enough to make the tours economically viable. Of course this didn’t stop the tour vendors from trying to sell the same identical standard tour, consisting of snorkeling, a dolphin show, visiting the mangroves, and possibly seeing starfish, somehow all in 2-3 hours. It was hard to see why September was considered the off-season because the weather was pleasant, albeit hot and humid, and it only rained once for a few hours during my 5 day visit. In the evening, strolling along the beach it certainly felt like the off-season as nearly every restaurant was eerily quiet with the majority of tables vacant.

The main draw for many tourists to Roatan is the large reef located just off-shore with numerous diving and snorkeling sites that are easily accessible. It is supposedly one of the cheapest places to get certified to scuba dive. Perhaps in the future I would consider returning there to learn how to dive but this visit was too short to think about that. For this visit I was only hoping to do some snorkeling, relax on the beach, and see some of the island.

Since it was low season it was difficult to arrange any longer snorkeling trips so it was only possible to go to some sites near West Bay and West End. Despite the close proximity to shore, there were large varieties of fish and even some sea turtles at these sites. While they lacked the brightly colored corals of other reefs I have seen, there were many aquatic plants and even some underwater caves in what appeared to be a healthy ecosystem.

Other than snorkeling I visited the Carambola Botanical Garden located just outside of West End to see some of the native plant life. The garden, though small, featured some nice trails and the various plants were well marked. The best feature of the garden was the hiking trail to the top of the mountain ridge and a stunning viewpoint from which there were views of the ocean and a small island known as Anthony’s Key.

The village of West End was equally quiet and the beach was nearly empty. The activity level seemed to pick up on Friday as the village began to set up a party for the international fishing competition that it was hosting. In the main street a stage was erected and many vendor booths were installed to serve food and drink while the music played. Unfortunately the competition didn’t start until Saturday, my day of departure, so I couldn’t see any of the festivities.

The festival aside, the one thing that seemed to be lacking from West End and West Bay was any sort of distinct culture. Maybe the waves of tourists have diluted any culture that was once present because now it seems like these parts of the island are like any other island tourist destination. There isn’t anything that really sets it apart; the beaches are nice, the reef is amazing, the food was largely mediocre with a few exceptions, but there isn’t really anything more to say. For a few days it was a good spot for a vacation, and maybe even for a week if you were learning how to dive, but any longer than that and I think boredom would set in. The surroundings are beautiful but I suppose that only goes so far…