TRAVEL & TOURISM

Toncontin International Airport in Tegucigalpa, long known by worldly travellers as 'that' airport due to its precarious geographic location and infamous 'short' runway, is now home to a number of reproductions of some of Copan's most famous sculptures.

According to the Tegucigalpa Airport Corporation (CAT), they are "attempting to create a Mayan ambiance at the terminal." Fine, but what Tegucigalpa really needs more than a Mayan interior decorating makeover is a 'real' airport in which flyers and pilots alike will no longer find themselves crossing themselves and praying the God prior to landing at Toncontin, which unfortunately is all too common today.

Landing at Toncontin is the equivalent of parallel parking a Ferrari at 100 mph: in the best of cases, quite difficult; in the worst of cases, quite impossible!

Christmas in Copan Ruinas....
The Copan Christmas Committee did a great job lighting up Copan's Central Park for the holidays. The Cathedral sported a fresh coat of white paint with yellow trim and a garland of white Christmas lights adorned the church. In addition, the municipal building was lit this year as well. The Mayan fountain (long out of use) was filled by volunteers with ornamental and tropical flowers and a lovely sign in front of the church listed all those individuals and businesses in Copan that donated money to the Christmas project.

A Christmas concert by a local Copan marimba group capped the event with a free three-hour concert in the park. Plans are already underway for next year's Christmas celebration, which should be bigger and better than this year's celebration. "Sombreros off" to the 97-98 Holiday Committee: "A job well done guys!"

Howard Rosenzweig, a U.S. expatriate living in the Village of Copan Ruinas, is the owner of the Casa de Cafe Bed and Breakfast.

Lethal yellow disease has spread to Honduras shores: The virus that kills coconut palms is now extending along the Honduran coast.

The disease has already ravaged various Caribbean nations as well as Mexico. In Jamaica, for example, over 10 million palm trees have died. The disease first appeared in Honduras on the island of Roatan in June 1996.

A hybrid coconut tree is now available that is resistant to the disease. Five thousand trees were purchased from Costa Rica, but at US$10 each, the cost of replanting the Honduran coast and Bay Islands would be prohibitive. As a result, Honduras is currently producing the hybrid here 'in country' and hopefully in the near future Honduras can expect a massive coconut palm reforestation project along the North Coast.

The World Bank recently announced a donation of US$7 million to the government of Honduras to help finance the 'Jaguar Route' project that seeks to protect the biodiversity in the 'Mesoamerican Biological Corridor,' also known as the 'Route of the Jaguar.'

The route originates in Mexico and terminates in Colombia, passing through Central America.

This region is home to numerous animal species, many in danger of extinction, and is home to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, many of whom are members of indigenous groups.

The program also seeks to teach the inhabitants of the 'Jaguar Route' to use their natural resources in a sustainable manner and improve the management of national parks within the zone.

The Honduran component of the project has a total cost of US$9.5 million, including a US$2.2 million payment in kind by the Honduran government, and US$300,000 that will be donated by communities benefitted by the project.

Howard Rosenzweig, a U.S. expatriate living in the Village of Copan Ruinas, is the owner of the Casa de Cafe Bed and Breakfast.

Honduras. Where is that, some small town in California? For years, this largest of the Central American countries has been overlooked by all but the most ardent travelers. Located between Guatemala and Nicaragua with El Salvador to the south, its coastlines on both the north and south coasts are endless stretches of white sandy beaches.

In recent years, Honduras has been experiencing a tourist boom. This is due to a politically stable democratic government, one of the largest textile industries in the world and a building craze of luxury and medium priced resort facilities still offering bargain prices.

Sharing the border to the south with Nicaragua is the department of Gracias a Dios, which contains the Mosquito Coast. This is the largest tropical rain forest in Latin America outside the Amazon basin. There are no roads, so all transportation is either the many rivers or along the hundreds of foot paths that crisscross through the dense jungle. There are no hotels, no stores and no trash. This is a protected reserve with monkeys, parrots, toucans, tapirs, alligators and lots of snakes and insects. There are a few small villages dotting the river banks inhabited by Garifuna Indians, all descents of Africa slaves. Fishing is their main occupation and many of them work for the commercial boats supplying lobster, conch, and shrimp to foreign markets. This is one of the most beautiful spots on earth.

The first major tourist city on the coast is Tela. In the early 1900's it was the headquarters for the Standard Fruit Company, which help turned Honduras into the original Banana Republic. The offices and staff living quarters have been converted into the Hotel Villas Telamar. This luxury resort is fronted by some of the most extensive beaches in the Caribbean. On the other side of the Tela River is Old Tela, with classic, brightly colored Caribbean houses and some of the newer cement block homes. On weekends, the open-air restaurants, small hotels and beaches fill with locals who come by bus, car or walking. During the week the area is pleasantly calm and tranquil. Most eateries serve the basic same menu: seafood, meat and chicken with a spicy coconut milk chowder with a hint of Africa.

Just outside of Tela on the main road is the 1,700-acre Lancetilla Botanical gardens, founded by the owner of the Standard Fruit Company in 1926. It contains one of the largest collections from around the world of tropical flora in Latin America. Guided tours are offered free of charge and there is a small nursery offering thousands of propagated specimens from the gardens.

On either side of Tela along the coast are Garifuna villages and protected nature reserves. To the west is Punta Sal National Park, a 485 square-mile land and marine preserve that is home to many types of birds and animals, including manatees. The preserve is bordered by the picturesque town of Miami. The 70-square mile Punta Izopo wildlife is just to the east and contains the same tropical atmosphere as Punta Sal.

The 95 mile drive east to La Ceiba, the largest town on the North Coast, takes you through the Nombre de Dios Mountains surrounded by miles of pineapple and banana plantations. The road winds in and out of the mountain producing breathtaking vistas of the sandy beaches and rocky coastline which the mainland is so famous for.

La Ceiba, busy and hot, is home to many expatriates and offers the traveler low- and medium-priced lodging. There are many excellent restaurants, stores and beaches and the town is known for its nightlife. It is the center of travel by both boat and plane to the Bay Islands.

One of the Honduras' best known parks, Pico Bonito, with panthers, quetzals and motmots, lays just a short distance outside of town. Another, Cuero Y Salado, is reached by traveling along the 90-year-old Banana Railroad which passes through small villages and part of the old banana fruit company farm. You then transfer to a small boat to navigate the lagoon. Howler monkeys will announce your arrival, toucans, herons, ibises, and manatee fill the park and lagoon with sights and sounds that leads into the Caribbean. There are cabins available for overnight stays.

Fifteen miles from town there still can be found peaceful Garifuna village just as they were 100 years ago. Charming Corozal, Sambocreek and El Porvenir offer ethnic dancing, local dishes with coconut bread and calm sandy beaches.

Another 150 miles further east is Trujillo. This is probably the oldest town on the North Coast and the famous site of the first mass in the new world. Paintings in some of the world's finest museums show Christopher Columbus and his crew arriving on shore, August 14, 1502. Actually, he was too sick to leave his captain's quarters and left his son in charge of the important day's festivities. There is still the remains of a Spanish fort which served in protecting from marauding pirates the gold and silver shipments traveling by mule from the interior.

The new luxurious Christopher Columbus hotel on the beach is a favorite of snowbound Canadian and Europeans tourists. It offers everything the tourist or business person could ask for in accommodations and activities.

William Walker, an American adventurer, is buried in Trujillo. During his third attempt to lead a revolt to capture all of Central America, he was captured by the Royal British Navy and on Sept. 12, 1860 was shot by firing squad. Another American, O. Henry, wrote his famous "Cabbages and Kings" in Trujillo after leaving the United States because of a grave financial situation. There is also the Museum Arqueologico y Piscina Rivera del Pedregal. It contains a plane crash, sewing machines, typewriters, fishing buoys and Mayan and Pre-Columbian artifacts.

More Garifuna villages are located around Trujillo along the river. This place is very Jamaican in style with lots of music, drums and dancing. The men and boys play while the woman dance. Each dance performed tells a story. With each dancer's personality the hypnotic music changes. Arms splayed, hips gyrating, heads back moving in circles as the drums beat faster and faster.

Once again from La Ceiba, it is only a short flight to the Bay Islands, part of the largest barriers reef in the Western hemisphere. They have just recently become known as a premier dive destination. Inhabited many years ago by pirates, slaves and British settlers who farmed to supply the ships, the Islands seem more Caribbean than Honduran. The Islanders speak English and are proud of their heritage. Now, they seem more American than British. Great Britain gave up possession of the Islands in the 1860s, but some of the same laws still apply to protect what were once British subjects.

The three main islands are Guanaja, Roatan and Utila. Roatan, the largest, has the best in accommodations with everything from hammocks to first class luxury dive resorts. Well-known are Fantasy Island, Coco View, French Harbor Yacht Club, Executive Inn, Bay Island Beach Resort, St. Anthony's and the New Full Moon Hotel on Westbay.

Utila to the west, usually better known by the backpackers, has few sandy beaches like Roatan. There are two luxury dive resorts called Utila Reef Resort and Utila Lodge. There are many good diving spots and turtles and large bays are seen on almost every dive. To the east lies Guanaja, the Venice of the Bay Islands, where just about everything is built on stilts over the water to escape the bugs. This is the less developed of the Bay Islands with no roads. There is only one well known recommended luxury dive resort, Bayman Bay Club. Others are quickly being built.

Almost anyone traveling to the Islands should be aware of the hoards of insects--particularly the sand flies, which are miniature biting flies that fly close the ground. They leave a large pink welt with a red dot in the middle. They are also called "no-see-ums". Mosquitoes, the second major pest in Honduras and the Bay Islands, left 25,000 cases of malaria last year. Be protected. Bring repellant, flea collars, or whatever it takes to not spoil your vacation. The smaller the Island gets, the worse the bugs are and they newer you are to the Islands, the better the bugs like you.

Once arriving on the main island of Roatan, most visitors try to bypass Coxen Hole. It is the capital and with narrow streets is heavily congested by taxi and bus traffic. There is rotting garbage and open sewage. Most people head for the small community called West End. The paved road ends there. Everyone there leads a simple lifestyle. Walking or riding a bike will get you to your destination within minutes. There are lots of small restaurants, bars, hotels and dive operations.

This entire end of the island is a protected marine reserve. West Bay and Halfmoon Bay have some of the best day and night snorkeling anywhere on the island. And the top twenty scuba dive sites are located in the marine park. It is said that if you wait long enough, you will meet everyone on the island in Westend.

The best way to discover the Islands is by boat. But for those of you who don't have your see legs yet, try a private tour with one of the island's many operators. Then you can decide which sites were your favorite and return by rental car taking your time exploring. The paved road runs from West End to a spectacular mountain top, affording views of both sides of the Islands. Then on to Oak Ridge, a fishing and shrimping village surrounded by canals and waterways that lead through mangrove swamps. Water taxis are for hire for photographing the interesting stilt houses. Many of the best walking and hiking trails start in Oakridge. One is to the highest peak located on the Island. From there you can see Port Royal, the main coast of Honduras and the Cayos Cochinos just off shore.

There is more to see and do after the paved road ends. Playa Beach and Punta Gorda, the first Garifuna settlement in the Bay Islands, are found along the dirt road. Other items of interest are the Iguana Farm, Carambola Gardens, the Reef Explorer glass-bottom boat and Marblehill Farms where all the delicious island jellies are made.

The more you see of Roatan and the Bay Islands and the more you spend time talking to the people, the more you will see why so many have made Honduras their home or have come back time and time again.

Tela restaurant recalls
Banana Republic's heyday

TELA -- There are a few hotels in the world where people stay because of their relationship to books or movies. In Honduras, one such hotel is the Hotel Tela, subject of Guillermo Yuscarán's book Un Gran Hotel.

Hotel Tela and its largest second floor restaurant is a reminder of days gone by -- high ceilings, spacious rooms, and a wooden construction with verandas looking out over the street and parking lot.

Hotel Tela was built at the height of American influence in Honduras, when Tela was still the center of the Tela Railroad Company, the principal subsidiary of the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana) in Honduras.

In the quiet evening, you can imagine red-faced gentlemen in their starched white suits and suspenders -- previously the thing to wear on the North Coast -- enjoying a selection from the bar that even now stocks rums, brandy, gin, whiskey and liqueurs, as if waiting for them to come back.

This restaurant appeals to several groups of people. As a once nice hotel grown gently shabby, a few of Tela's tourists eat here. Unfortunately, as Tela becomes more notorious for its assaults on tourists, it is nice to have a hotel with a restaurant inside so you do not have be on the streets at night. A secure parking lot is also becoming a prerequisite for people travelling on the North Coast by car.

The dinner menu includes all the beef, pork, chicken and seafood dishes one would expect. The prices are in line with other places on the North Coast. This is not the place to eat traditional food, although a typical plate of meat, rice, beans and plantains is offered at Lps. 42.

Some local foreign residents enjoy coming here, especially for Sunday brunch after the 8 a.m. English-speaking church service at the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church. The restaurant offers three styles of breakfast: Continental, Honduran and American-style coffee or tea and pancakes with honey.

Tela is not a city famous for its fast service, so breakfast early if you have an 8 a.m. meeting. If you have early meetings in nearby Garifuna villages, just figure you will be late no matter where you eat and be thankful most Hondurans will be too polite to comment on you being late and will be late themselves.

As you see the sparse trickle of tourists and locals, you will wonder how this place stays open at all. Many North Coast restaurants are currently running in the red as most Hondurans no longer have enough money to dine out. What saves this restaurant is the generous size of its dining room, which is open, well-lighted and relatively cool. It is a popular place to hold meetings or seminars, too.

Local conservation associations and the Association of Black Women are some of the groups that meet here, lunch included. Wedding receptions and luncheons also fit nicely.

The restaurant is conveniently located two blocks east of Central Park, on Calle Comercio, and is only one block from the beach. It is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Most Hondurans agree with the saying El que madruga, Dios le ayuda (literally, God helps those who get up at dawn) and thus retire to bed early. You can take your drinks out on the veranda and enjoy the evening breeze if you are not ready to go back to your room yet.

Before dinner at dusk, walk over the bridge between the old and new parts of the city to the Episcopal Church and old Tela, where the hotel is, and watch the birds such as egrets and herons settle in for the night. Then enjoy the amiable service of the hotel, provided by women who have grown old together with the hotel.

Although the linoleum is now mismatched from many repairs, the ceilings show damage from too many years of strong winds and rain, the hotel -- including the restaurant bathroom -- is always clean with very few bugs and no rats or mice, which cannot be said for other more pretentious places on the North Coast or the Islands. All of this makes Hotel Tela's restaurant a nice place to relax after hard living or hard traveling.

There is a new air service connecting mainland Honduras with the Bay Islands, as well as service to La Mosquitia.

Rollins Airlines, whose motto (written over the entry door of each plane) is "In God we trust", now offers daily flights to Roatan, Utila, Palacios, Brus Laguna, Puerto Lempira and Tegucigalpa.

Schedules are as follows:

La Ceiba - Roatan: 6 a.m., 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 12 (noon), 1:30 p.m., 4 p.m.
Roatan - La Ceiba: 7:15 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m. Monday - Saturday

La Ceiba - Utila: 6 a.m., 3 p.m.
Utila - La Ceiba: 6:30 a.m., 3:15 p.m. Monday - Saturday

La Ceiba - Palacios - Brus Laguna: 7 a.m. leaves La Ceiba, 7:55 a.m. arrives Palacios, 8:05 a.m. leaves Palacios, 8:30 a.m. arrives Brus Laguna, 9:30 am leaves Brus Laguna, arrives La Ceiba 10:20 a.m. Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

La Ceiba - Pto. Lempira - Tegucigalpa. Leaves La Ceiba at 7:15 a.m., arrives Puerto Lempira at 8:40 a.m., leaves Puerto Lempira at 9 a.m., arrives Tegucigalpa 10 a.m., leaves Tegucigalpa at 11:30 am, arrives Puerto Lempira at 1 p.m., leaves Puerto Lempira at 1:15 p.m., arrives La Ceiba at 2:30 p.m., Fridays only.

For information, contact 45-1967 in Roatan or 43-4181 in La Ceiba.

The new Camino Real Intercontinental Hotel opened its doors in San Pedro Sula in December. The $60 million project brings a true 5 star hostelry to Honduras' shores. Located next door to the Multiplaza Mall, the project is the first of a series of Camino Real Hotels to be built in Honduras. A second is currently being constructed in Tegucigalpa.

Among future projects are a hotel/resort complex on the island of Guanaja, close to the Iguana Bay resort property that is currently being constructed by a number of well-known Hollywood actors.

The addition of such strong, well-financed, well-marketed and properly executed hotel/resort properties to Honduras' hotel offering will surely do much to broaden Honduras appeal to the well-heeled international visitor.

Howard Rosenzweig, a U.S. expatriate living in the Village of Copan Ruinas, is the owner of the Casa de Cafe Bed and Breakfast.