The tourist attractions on Guanaja include diving, hiking and fishing. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

By WENDY GRIFFIN

Visiting Guanaja is different when a motor boat takes you from the airport landing strip to the Islena ticket office, which has its own dock! Guanaja, the second largest of the Bay Islands, has only the road -- from Mangrove Bight to Savannah Bight, so if you want to go anywhere else, you need to go by boat. When I got to Bonacca, Guanaja's main town, the Rollins airline people had to call a water taxi by marine band radio to take me to my hotel.

Like the rest of the Bay Islands, Guanaja is famous for its scuba diving. Snorkeling is another way to see the second largest coral reef in the world. Dive boats will take snorklers out, or there are good places close to shore, like Michael's Rock. Diving lessons and equipment rental are available at different resorts around the islands. The dive shops will also teach you how to use snorkeling equipment, if this is your first time.

"When I came in on the plane, all the people going to Posada del Sol were carrying rods and reels," said one tourist. Guanaja has some of the best permit and bonefish fishing in the world. Deep sea fishing is also available through the resorts.

Another couple found Guanaja by looking up remote waterfalls on the Internet. Hiking trails lead to several falls, but these can be a challenge. Insect repellant or baby oil is recommended for the no-see-ums or sand flies (jejenes, plumilla). Local cures like sulfur in oil or sulphur soap also helped, but Off seemed to work the best. The local people use Icy Hot to control the itching. These products can be bought in the town of Bonacca.

For the daring, instead of walking along the beach, you could sea kayak near the beach. With two people, you can make some time. Dive shops offer life vests for these kinds of trips.

Walking around Bonacca town or Savannah Bight one sees examples of traditional island architecture. (Photo by Wendy Griffin.)

Guanaja has three main communities. Bonacca is the principal town located on two keys opposite the airport. So people say, "Voy a los Cayos" (I am going to the keys) to refer to Bonacca. As your motorboat pulls into Bonacca, you see some houses built over the water on stilts. Walkways and sidewalks connect the houses, since there are no cars and thus no roads.

Bonacca has all of Guanaja's infrastructure -- two banks (Atlantida, BANCAHSA), the post office, the HONDUTEL office, several good stores and a few restaurants. There are no souvenir shops to speak of on the island, so this is an opportunity awaiting some local entrepreneur.

Most resorts will arrange for their guests to go into Bonacca to walk around and buy essentials like more film or malaria medication. If you turn down the walkway beside Banco Atlantida, you can see a typical island neighborhood with raised wooden houses, some with gingerbread work on the porch.

Across the water from the municipal dock are Guanaja's seafood and fish packing plants. Some ships at this dock are there to bring supplies from La Ceiba, as the island produces almost none of its own food. But many ships out in the water are part of Guanaja's shrimp, lobster, conch and fishing fleet.

One way to go to Mangrove Bight from Bonacca is through a man-made canal cut through the island. Since this town was badly hit by Hurricane Mitch and many people are still living in temporary plastic shelters 18 months after Mitch, many of the people who go there are members of work crews who are rebuilding houses. "With a work crew of 80 coming soon, that is probably more tourists to see the town than in a year of tourism before Mitch," said Randy Rogers, a coordinator with Global Mission there.

From the municipal dock on Bonacca, it is also possible to catch the boat to the other large town, Savannah Bight. Here, a road connects the two towns. But the only way to cross it are by private truck (I paid Lps. 200), or on foot, which I would not recommend, as the road goes through Brisas del Mitch, a land invasion of hurricane survivors.

In Savannah Bight one can see traditional Bay Island homes. Some tourists visit an archaeological site known as Marble Hill. Anthony Conforti is working with an ancient site restoration project at Plan Grande, says Mack Bacca of the Popular and Progressive Youth of Guanaja organization. For more information on this project, contact Conforti at <acalan@worldnet.att.net>. Another interesting sight in Savannah Bight are pieces of the ship Fantome, which went down during Mitch. Ask the PPYG office for a key to get in.

The boat leaves Bonacca at 10:30 a.m. and in 30 minutes you are in Savannah. The trip costs Lps. 15. It comes back at noon with students commuting to Bonacca's high school. This only gives you an hour to look around. Or you can arrange ahead of time for a water taxi to pick you up, or the Sava boat will take your party back to Bonacca at 7 p.m. for Lps. 300 no matter how many in your party. Residents are in the process of building a hotel over the water in Savannah Bight, but right now neither Savannah Bight nor Mangrove Bight has a hotel, so these are day trips only.

People worry about going to Guanaja after Mitch. There is electricity and the water is running. Resorts have been rebuilt. While the mangroves look bad, blue herons, white egrets, and pelicans still fly around or in them.

"If I could tell tourists one thing," said Julius Rensch, a former president of the Guanaja Hotel Association, "it is that tourism in Guanaja is alive."

Larger resorts like Bayman Bay and La Posada, as well as inexpensive hotels like Hotel Miller, report good occupancy rates as the word gets out that Guanaja is open for business. Indeed, hotels like Bayman Bay and Hotel Miller had guests during Mitch, because with only 10 hours notice it was not possible to evacuate all the tourists off the island.

So, if you are looking for a place away from telephones, traffic noise and crime, Guanaja offers possibilities for diving, but also much more, for all budgets.

By HOWARD ROSENZWEIG

Get with the net! Did you know that one-fourth of all U.S. households made an online purchase during 1999 and according to CNN, 55 percent of Americans have Internet access and 36 percent are on line for at least 5 hours per week?

What does that all mean for Honduran tourism, you might ask? Simply put, the net is the place to be in terms of promoting and marketing Honduras as a destination, as well as promoting Honduras' private sector tourism offerings. Only a handful of Honduran resorts, hotels, lodges, B&B's and tour ops have barely scratched the surface in terms of effective net presence. The net has quickly become the place to engage in the full gamut of travel services, information and products.

From the comfort of one's PC the prospective traveller can get country information, weather, news, travel advisories, recommendations on where to stay, where to eat and sites to visit, all topped off with a seemingly infinite series of links to just about any type of info one may require. In short order the net has become the first and last word for travellers seeking the best airfare or the perfect beach hideaway. And now e-commerce solutions offer the client the potential to book and pay online.

The challenge for the Honduran tourism sector is to develop an effective net presence, by which I refer to a good looking, informative web site and a customer friendly policy of responding to e-mail traffic from potential clients. For the most part, this is not the case today in the Honduran tourism private sector. Most hotels, resorts and tour ops do not have a web site and do not work with e-mail. For the few who do have a net presence, often getting an answer to an e-mail for a potential guest is a time consuming and frustrating experience.

However there are a few shining rays of light. Tour ops such as Garifuna Tours based in Tela have very effective web pages and respond quickly to e-mails. Garifuna Tours has also been instrumental in getting a Tela web page on the net in order to promote Tela as a destination. Hotels such as Maya Vista in Tela, La Rocas, Arco Iris and Island Pearl on Roatan and the soon-to-open The Lodge at Pico Bonito all have an effective net presence. The biannual Honduras Tips, which I refer to as the Bible of Honduran Tourism, also uses the internet effectively.

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More net news. According to Jupiter Communications, which analyzes the Internet sector, there are now approximately 10 million Internet users in Latin American. This figure is expected to jump to 67 million by 2005. According to estimates, some 2 percent of the 500 million inhabitants of Latin America were connected to the Internet in 1999, by 2003 it is estimated that this figure will reach 10 percent.

So, what does this mean to the Honduran tourism sector? Glad you asked! The above figures point to the extremely low coverage that the Internet has achieved thus far in Latin America. In Honduras in particular, an extremely deficient telecommunications infrastructure makes it difficult for the tourism private sector to get online. West Bay Beach on the island of Roatan is a major tourism pole with a number of fine hotels, a great restaurant and dive operations. Tourism entrepreneurs must travel daily over a dirt track to Coxen Hole to check on e-mail or make a phone call.

But a 1940s era telecommunications infrastructure is not the only guilty party here. There are a number of tourism poles -- Trujillo, La Ceiba, Tela and Copan Ruinas -- where just about every hotel has a phone line, yet only a small fraction are connected to the net. Why? I'm glad you asked! Part of the reason may be lack of information as to what the net really is and what it is capable of doing, part of the reason is laziness, pure and simple. Why bother to roll out of one's comfy, cool hammock, set that margarita down on the table and log on, when one can loll away the afternoon soaking up tropical breezes while the muchacha sits at the reception desk and attends to guests?

An effective net presence (as those of us tour ops hotels, resorts and lodges can attest) takes a lot, and I mean a lot of time. Answering e-mails, sending e-mails, linking and networking with other sites and fellow tourism entrepreneurs, answering travel questions and concerns, taking reservations, dealing with deposits, cancellations, and much more. Many online travellers are "high maintenance," which means they require a lot of personal, high-quality interaction between the proprietor and client. And simply put, many Honduran tourism entrepreneurs are not set up to do business this way.

However, as Internet extends its reach in Honduras and our Cold War era telecommunications infrastructure improves at a painfully slow rate, I predict things will improve, but don't quote me on that!

By HOWARD ROSENZWEIG

Catch some great airfares! Honduran carrier Islena Airlines, which is part of Grupo Taca, is offering up some great airfares to all their destinations in Honduras. Now one can fly to Roatan, Guanaja, Utila, San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa and La Mosquitia from Islena's La Ceiba hub. Deep dish discounts are running up to 50 percent, so catch these cheapo fares while you can because I'm sure they won't last forever.

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Did you know? That every 10 minutes in the United States a traveller on vacation loses their cash. Well, according to American Express, it's a fact. So, next time you head out on that weekend getaway, cross country jaunt or intercontinental journey, make sure you've got your TC's (traveller's checks) handy. As the man, Carl Maulden himself, said so eloquently: "Don't leave home without 'em."

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Over the past few years, Cuba has gone from a cheap getaway for Soviet-block package vacationers out for a little sun, fun and revolutionary fervor to a major up-and-coming Caribbean tourism destination, especially popular with western Europeans and Canadians. A peek at the stats is quite illuminating:

In the 1950s, Cuba was a major Caribbean tourism destination garnering some 40 percent of Caribbean bound tourism. At the time, the major source of tourism was from the United States. After the Cuban revolution of 1959, tourism dried up as the United States enacted a total ban on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens, an embargo that still stands today. Tourists to Cuba now hail from primarily Canada and Europe. In 1988, 53,000 Canadians visited Cuba; by 1998, that figure had mushroomed to 215,000. In 1988, Europeans registered 112,000 visitors to the island, by 1998 that had ballooned to a whopping 793,000 Euro tourists. In 1988, Cuba had some 7,000 tourist class hotel rooms; today the figure stands at 25,000. In 1988, Cuba was the 5th largest tourist destination in the Caribbean, by 1999 it was the 4th largest. By 2010, it is estimated that Cuba will be receiving some 5-10 million tourists, quite a point spread there, but I think tourism officials are planning for (more like hoping and praying for) an end to the U.S. embargo long before that time. As the numbers clearly indicate, since 1988 Cuba has been on a tourism roll -- and this despite the fact that U.S. citizens are prohibited from vacationing in Cuba.

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New Flight news. Aerocaribe, a Mexican airline that is part of Mexicana, is initiating daily direct flights from San Pedro Sula to Cancun. The flight leaves San Pedro Sula at 3:05 p.m. and leaves Cancun at 12:45 p.m. Connections in Cancun can be made for Mexico City, Miami, Cozumel, Havana, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Merida and Chetumal. For information, contact: San Pedro Sula 557-1934, Tegucigalpa 236-7560/64/68 or on the web at: <http://www.aerocaribe.com.mx>.

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How about some bad news for a change? The Pan American Health Organization has just came out with their listing of the most violent countries in Latin America. Guess which country came out first? Colombia, well no surprise there. In the number two position is our neighbor, El Salvador and, in third, is...drum roll, please...yep, you guessed it, Honduras. According to the report, the biggest problems in Honduras are found in Tegucigalpa (population about 1 million) and San Pedro Sula (population approximately 500,000) -- no surprise there either. As a travel writer, I have received many letters via e-mail of late regarding the security situation for tourists in Honduras and my answer to these prospective tourists is always clear and concise. On the whole, Honduras is a safe country for visitors if the normal, everyday precautions that a traveller would take anyplace are employed.

Here in Copan Ruinas where I reside, I meet dozens of tourists week after week and month after month and the overwhelming majority have had nothing but positive things to say about their Honduran vacation, and that's the honest truth. Are there serious problems of violence and crime in Honduras? Of course, but it must be noted that the overwhelming majority are not directed against tourists. Not many tourists, for example, are going to take a midnight stroll down the dark, deserted streets of Comayaguela at night. If they do, they would be inviting a criminal to attack them. However, a good meal and an evening of nightlife on the Boulevard Morazan would be great fun for the tourist who is spending a night in Tegucigalpa.

And a final note, if we include North America and South America in the ranking of the most violent nations, now guess who comes in at the number one spot? The good old US of A.