(Belize/Honduras)…Flying is not becoming easier, and on every flight I hear at least once a neighbor complaining how long the flight is. Not every passenger chooses to fly, I know, but I suspect the majority do, and I got to wondering if flights are only as long as the passenger’s desire to get to wherever the flight is heading to.
The experience of flying could be better, but it can always be worse, and I always pinch my leg to remind myself how lucky we are to live in accessible, transportation-minded America, in which New Yorkers enjoy even more flexibility, including three cruise ports. Many of those people I see when I travel do not have such advantages. This is not me being patronizing. It simply is true.
Recently, I came across another example of this good fortune, having reached two towns of the same name and linked by history. In the south of Belize, in Toledo District, close to the border with Guatemala, is a small town called Punta Gorda. That’s Spanish for Fat Point. Flying there—actually, puddle-jumping through this country the size of New Jersey from Belize City to Dangriga to Placencia to Punta Gorda—on a small, low-flying plane, I saw a stately Belizean procession of meandering rivers, thick jungles and thin, sand-colored roads, but nothing that looked like a point, fat or otherwise. There is no reason it has its name, except if you consider where its people came from. Its people are the Garinagu, more commonly known as the Garifuna.
They originally hail from the Caribbean islands, or was it Venezuela and Guyana? No one remembers for sure. The British treated them terribly and threw them out of what is now the island-nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines. They landed, destitute but still not enslaved, on the Honduran island of Roatán, where they established a small town called Punta Gorda, from where the Belizean town got its name.
Some stayed. Others moved along the coast to Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize, which is its largest population. The second largest is in Los Angeles. Passing a large clock tower painted with national symbols, the bus driver in Punta Gorda, Belize, popped in a CD of the Garinagu music of Andy Palacio. Its infectious beats swayed like wind-caressed palm trees. Palacio died young, in 2007, and is considered a national treasure. “There’s another Punta Gorda in Honduras,” I was told. I knew that. I had been there, and now I had been to both, but I kept silent. It seemed from what I heard that for many Garinagu going to Roatán was a dream, a pilgrimage of return. I felt slightly self-conscious that I traveled to both Fat Points, especially as it was my British ancestors who kicked them out of their 18th-century home.
Additionally, I saw that it is far, far easier and quicker—but not as much fun—to fly from Belize City to Houston and then back south to Roatán than it is to ferry across from Punta Gorda, Belize, to either the Guatemalan or Honduran coasts and then continue by road to La Ceiba, which sits more or less opposite Honduras’ Islas de la Bahia, one of which is Roatán.
In La Ceiba, travelers must make a choice of catching a second ferry or taking a flight. Thus, most Belizean Punta Gordans have never been to their Honduran parent. The Belizean ferry does not run every day, and even if you sail to Honduras, you still have to pass through Guatemalan waters and customs, adding to the logistical nightmare. In Honduras’ Punta Gorda I stumbled, quite by chance, on the 211th anniversary celebrations of the Garinagu’s arrival on Roatán. Even on this small island, getting to Punta Gorda takes some effort. The island has a scrunched-up spine along which travels its one two-way road, but the hassle was worth it. The party oozed exuberance. There was music, food, dancing and colorful dress.
The town stretches along a dusty main street, a white-sand beach, lines of power cables and palm trees and the blue Caribbean Sea. Its wooden buildings are as bright as the costumes worn on this special day and in memory of distant origins—oranges, blues, yellows; West African designs, conical caps and vibrant bandanas. In hindsight it was also memorable for its guest of honor, who landed a short way down the beach, stepped out of a helicopter and sauntered down, to where we all sat eating seafood stew, wearing a large white Stetson hat and shaking hands. Soldiers twitched to attention, but the mood remained happy.
It was Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the former president of Honduras, who at press time still remains in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa after his much-chronicled political troubles, coup d’état, exile to Nicaragua and clandestine return. He was supposed to have come with Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista, but did not due to a Honduran-Nicaraguan dispute concerning maritime borders that rears its ugly head every few years. Maybe Ortega wanted to visit beautiful Roatán, but politics stopped him. Many of Belize’s Punta Gorda citizens are halted by expense and difficulty. There is little that should stop us.
The experience of flying could be better, but it can always be worse, and I always pinch my leg to remind myself how lucky we are to live in accessible, transportation-minded America, in which New Yorkers enjoy even more flexibility, including three cruise ports. Many of those people I see when I travel do not have such advantages. This is not me being patronizing. It simply is true.
Recently, I came across another example of this good fortune, having reached two towns of the same name and linked by history. In the south of Belize, in Toledo District, close to the border with Guatemala, is a small town called Punta Gorda. That’s Spanish for Fat Point. Flying there—actually, puddle-jumping through this country the size of New Jersey from Belize City to Dangriga to Placencia to Punta Gorda—on a small, low-flying plane, I saw a stately Belizean procession of meandering rivers, thick jungles and thin, sand-colored roads, but nothing that looked like a point, fat or otherwise. There is no reason it has its name, except if you consider where its people came from. Its people are the Garinagu, more commonly known as the Garifuna.
They originally hail from the Caribbean islands, or was it Venezuela and Guyana? No one remembers for sure. The British treated them terribly and threw them out of what is now the island-nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines. They landed, destitute but still not enslaved, on the Honduran island of Roatán, where they established a small town called Punta Gorda, from where the Belizean town got its name.
Some stayed. Others moved along the coast to Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize, which is its largest population. The second largest is in Los Angeles. Passing a large clock tower painted with national symbols, the bus driver in Punta Gorda, Belize, popped in a CD of the Garinagu music of Andy Palacio. Its infectious beats swayed like wind-caressed palm trees. Palacio died young, in 2007, and is considered a national treasure. “There’s another Punta Gorda in Honduras,” I was told. I knew that. I had been there, and now I had been to both, but I kept silent. It seemed from what I heard that for many Garinagu going to Roatán was a dream, a pilgrimage of return. I felt slightly self-conscious that I traveled to both Fat Points, especially as it was my British ancestors who kicked them out of their 18th-century home.
Additionally, I saw that it is far, far easier and quicker—but not as much fun—to fly from Belize City to Houston and then back south to Roatán than it is to ferry across from Punta Gorda, Belize, to either the Guatemalan or Honduran coasts and then continue by road to La Ceiba, which sits more or less opposite Honduras’ Islas de la Bahia, one of which is Roatán.
In La Ceiba, travelers must make a choice of catching a second ferry or taking a flight. Thus, most Belizean Punta Gordans have never been to their Honduran parent. The Belizean ferry does not run every day, and even if you sail to Honduras, you still have to pass through Guatemalan waters and customs, adding to the logistical nightmare. In Honduras’ Punta Gorda I stumbled, quite by chance, on the 211th anniversary celebrations of the Garinagu’s arrival on Roatán. Even on this small island, getting to Punta Gorda takes some effort. The island has a scrunched-up spine along which travels its one two-way road, but the hassle was worth it. The party oozed exuberance. There was music, food, dancing and colorful dress.
The town stretches along a dusty main street, a white-sand beach, lines of power cables and palm trees and the blue Caribbean Sea. Its wooden buildings are as bright as the costumes worn on this special day and in memory of distant origins—oranges, blues, yellows; West African designs, conical caps and vibrant bandanas. In hindsight it was also memorable for its guest of honor, who landed a short way down the beach, stepped out of a helicopter and sauntered down, to where we all sat eating seafood stew, wearing a large white Stetson hat and shaking hands. Soldiers twitched to attention, but the mood remained happy.
It was Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the former president of Honduras, who at press time still remains in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa after his much-chronicled political troubles, coup d’état, exile to Nicaragua and clandestine return. He was supposed to have come with Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista, but did not due to a Honduran-Nicaraguan dispute concerning maritime borders that rears its ugly head every few years. Maybe Ortega wanted to visit beautiful Roatán, but politics stopped him. Many of Belize’s Punta Gorda citizens are halted by expense and difficulty. There is little that should stop us.
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