Roatan’s Roads, Rain, and Revelations

There’s a particular kind of optimism required to board a southbound flight in December, carrying sunscreen and a swimsuit, while everyone at home is either cursing the cold or watching the Leafs lose. My wife and I had been talking about Roatan Honduras for a couple of years. When we finally committed, we recruited our friends Kim and Dan to join us. Turned out Dan and I had grown up around the block from each other as kids, and his sister and I had gone to school together. Neither of us had known this until well into our friendship. Small world. Smaller car. More on that shortly.

Arriving on Roatan Honduras

The flight from Toronto to Coxen Hole is mercifully short. What followed was not. Standing at the rental kiosk, four adults carrying the luggage equivalent of a small European relocation, we were presented with our assigned vehicle. A Kia Picanto. For context, a Picanto makes a Smart Car look like a Suburban. The rental agent handed over the keys with a smile that suggested he’d watched this exact scene many times and never once stopped finding it entertaining.

Somehow, four adults, four large checked bags, four carry-ons, backpacks, purses, and our duty-free purchases all went in. There were bags on laps, bags wedged into footwells, and one carry-on I believe was balanced on someone’s shoulder for the duration. The missus had already mapped our route and declared the situation perfectly manageable. She has always been the optimist in this partnership.

We then discovered that Roatan Honduras is, geographically speaking, a series of small mountains connected by narrow roads. Our fully loaded Kia had the horsepower of a determined lawnmower. On the steeper grades, we’d exchange a very specific look. The “should we get out and push” look. We chose to keep faith in the little engine that could. Barely.

Welcome to the Island: Storm Edition

Roatan greeted us with a tropical storm that had just been downgraded from a hurricane two days earlier. Darkness, driving rain, flooded roads, no power across most of the island. We threaded the clown car through the jungle trying to find our Airbnb with Google Maps and pure stubbornness. Eventually we gave in, called the host, and he guided us the final few hundred metres to our Palmetto Bay villa. Beautiful beachfront property. Currently soaking wet and pitch black.

We unloaded the car in the rain and the dark with no power and no running water. There was nothing to do but laugh. A few drinks by candlelight, a lot of stories about the journey, and the sheer absurdity of the evening turned what could have been a miserable first night into something genuinely memorable. The storm raged. We played cards by candlelight and eventually drifted off to the sound of the rain hammering the roof.

Morning brought calmer skies and the full reveal of what we’d actually landed in. A gorgeous beachfront home right on the Caribbean at Palmetto Bay, part of a small community of villas with a pool and a restaurant on site, all with wraparound porches facing the water. Our first proper Roatan sunset that evening, watched from those porch chairs with drinks in hand, went a long way toward forgiving the arrival.

Food, Fritters, and French Harbour

Once provisioned at Eldon’s Supermarket in French Harbour, plus a couple of flashlights just in case, we were properly equipped for the week. French Harbour is a great little coastal village of about 3,000 people, friendly and unhurried, with the kind of waterfront that makes you want to slow everything down.

On the drive back to the villa, we stopped at a little fish shack on the water called Roatan’s Famous Conch Fritters. The name is not false advertising. The food was exceptional, the staff were warm, and the price was the kind that makes you briefly question why you ever eat anywhere else. We would return more than once. It’s that kind of place.

One thing about traveling in Roatan Honduras is that there is never a shortage of places worth eating at. Fresh food, good service, reasonable prices. It’s a consistent theme across the island, whether you’re at a roadside shack or a proper restaurant. We stumbled across Romeo’s on the coast of French Harbour one evening and it delivered on every count. I’ve written before about the particular pleasure of traveling with good company, and Kim and Dan were exactly the right people for a trip like this. Good natured, up for anything, and willing to pile into a clown car without complaint.

Exploring the Island: West to East

The western end of the island is tourism central. West Bay Beach is exactly what it sounds like: glistening white sand, turquoise water, and resort after resort lining the strip. Popular dive destination too, so it’s always busy. My better half had been looking forward to touring the properties and did so with the thoroughness of a professional inspector. The rest of us followed along and evaluated the amenities with similarly rigorous standards. The swim-up bars passed.

West End, just east of West Bay, has a charming waterfront malecon where we stopped for lunch and wandered through the Roatan Chocolate Factory. The ladies made several sweet purchases. I said nothing about luggage weight limits. Some battles aren’t worth picking.

Mahogany Bay near Coxen Hole is the purpose-built cruise complex, self-contained and polished in that slightly produced way. It makes for excellent photos even if it has a Hollywood-backlot quality to it. We got our shots and moved on.

The east end is a different place entirely. Less developed. More elemental. You travel the spine of the low mountains running the length of the island, with views of jungle and coastline that genuinely stop you mid-sentence. Pirates historically favoured this end of Roatan. Spend an afternoon out there and you understand why. There’s still something a bit untamed about it. The scenery is spectacular and the quiet is genuine.

The Rhythm of Villa Life

Between the excursions, there were days that were simply about being somewhere beautiful and doing very little about it. Hammock time. Reading on the porch. Strolling the beach. Thankfully absent loudspeakers. No all-inclusive buffet schedule dictating the shape of your day. No sea of tourists in various stages of inebriation. Our own agenda, entirely. This is one of the genuine pleasures of villa travel over resort life, and something I’ve touched on when writing about the case for slowing down. When you remove the noise, you actually hear yourself think. Highly recommended.

The evenings fell into a comfortable rhythm. Sunset from the porch. Dinner. And then euchre. Tina was still learning the game at this point, which became a reliable source of entertainment for the rest of us throughout the trip. The rounds were lively. The commentary was pointed. Dan and I had the advantage of experience, which we used as generously as possible. The Kim, for her part, was a patient teacher. When she wasn’t winning.

Roatan Island Brewing: A Canadian in the Jungle

On one of our grocery runs, I spotted a roadside sign that I could not, in good conscience, ignore. Down a jungle road, past the point where most rational people would have turned around, sat the Roatan Island Brewing Company. A proper microbrewery. On a Caribbean island. I told Dan. We turned the Picanto around without further discussion.

The owner, Ilias Maier, had arrived in Roatan from Canada back in 2003 and built something genuinely worth the detour. His beers draw on fresh spring water from beneath the property, Czech grains and hops, and Caribbean flavour profiles. We sampled several flights. He then encouraged us to stay for lunch and try the in-house burgers. We did. Outstanding call. We left with bottles of Paradise Ale and Sunny Haze tucked under our arms and spent the rest of the afternoon arguing about which was better. We never fully resolved it.

Sloths, Shells, and the East End

The words ‘animal sanctuary’ had barely left anyone’s lips before both women were calculating drive times. Daniel Johnson’s Monkey and Sloth Hang Out is a family-run sanctuary on the eastern end of the island. Not a zoo. Up-close encounters with sloths, monkeys, and tropical birds, with strict visitor guidelines before anyone gets near the animals. The animals were clearly well cared for and well housed. My better half and Kim were, to put it gently, not playing it cool. Reminds me of a very similar look they both had in the Bahamas when swimming with pigs became a serious agenda item. Some things transcend geography.

A separate note on Kim’s shell collection: it was growing at a pace that concerned everyone except Kim. Every beach walk produced new additions, each requiring a full briefing on where it was found, the circumstances of the discovery, and what its future would look like back in Canada. Dan’s good-natured attempts to explain luggage weight limits and carry-on physics were received with complete serenity. She took them all home. Every last one.

By this point in the trip, our valiant Kia had also quietly lost first gear. Not misplaced it. Just gone. The hills now required gathering momentum and committing to second gear with a reasonable prayer attached. We adjusted and moved on. That’s the Roatan way, it seemed.

Christmas on Roatan Honduras

Christmas Day: Santa hats on the beach, calls home to family, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing we’d made exactly the right call on the annual December escape. That evening we dressed up for dinner at the villa’s onsite restaurant. Caribbean Christmas music, two other tables in the whole place, and the kind of meal that finishes with genuine Honduran coffee so good it demands a pound to take home. I take my coffee seriously. The missus takes her photos seriously. Almost as seriously as Kim takes her shells. Dan, for his part, takes his Westerns seriously, and had packed enough paperbacks to survive a longer storm than the one we’d arrived in.

Back at the villa, someone turned on the TV. Nobody expected much. We found The Witcher. This was the moment we became people who binge-watch on vacation. Some vacations change you in unexpected ways.

The Clown Car’s Final Journey

Departure morning. The Picanto’s last mission. By the time we pulled up to the rental kiosk at Coxen Hole, we were down to two gears and the brake pads were operating primarily on the memory of friction. The agent checked for dents and scratches. We handed over the keys with practiced nonchalance and walked away at a pace that said nothing in particular.

Two days after landing home, the travel industry shut down entirely for COVID. Kim and Dan came back symptomatic and spent weeks recovering. None of us knew, boarding that return flight, that the world was about to change in the way it did. That trip carries a particular retrospective weight because of it. It was the last one for quite a while, and as last trips go, it was a very good one.

Why Roatan Honduras Belongs on Your List

Roatan is a regular stop on Caribbean cruise itineraries and deserves more than a port day allows. Small enough to tour the whole island in a single day, big enough in character and scenery to earn a longer stay. The food is fresh and genuinely good, the people are warm, the prices are reasonable, and the water is every shade of blue you’ve ever seen on a travel brochure.

The Roatan Island Brewing Company earns a detour for anyone who believes good beer and great geography go together. The east end scenery will stay with you. Daniel Johnson’s sanctuary is worth an afternoon. And the conch fritters at that little shack on the French Harbour waterfront are worth whatever the drive takes. Next time, I’m extending the stay. And booking a car with all of its gears.

If you’re thinking about planning a trip to Roatan Honduras, the team at Boarding Pass Travel can handle the details, find you the right accommodations, and ideally arrange a rental vehicle with a functioning first gear. Just maybe schedule it outside hurricane season.