(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.

(Honduras)…Flying into the scruffy but enjoyable town of Coxen Hole, the erstwhile capital of Honduras’ Bay Islands, on the island of Roatán, I was struck by how green the isle was; and that it had some topography, a definite sylvan spine running down its middle. After the scrubby flatness of Antigua & Barbuda and the Bahamas, I realised I had been luckier picking out first Jamaica and, now, Roatán. It has two main tourist spots, with the more upscale hotels on West Bay Beach and the backpackers and scuba crowd in West End. It is possible to walk between the two, but not at night, as some guidebooks suggest, there being two stretches over rocks close to a cliff face and a steep, metal bridge that crosses a small canal entrance and is missing one or two of its wooden slats.
I am not a beach-lover, but the strand at West Bay, especially in front of the new Infinity Bay Resort (www.infinitybay.com), is gorgeous and has all the criteria that I require: it was curved for starters; had a sandy floor, was warm and had fish of several colours swimming metres from the shore. Iguanas patrolled the sharp jags of the coral to one end, while to the other were two good restaurants, Las Rocas and Bite on the Beach.
Jesus lizards (Basiliscus plumifrons) scuttled around on their back legs like Keystone Cops. To get to the other, eastern end of the island, it is necessary to catch two buses, one from West End to Coxon Hole, the other from Coxen Hole to Oak Ridge, which was hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. It seems to have recovered in the subsequent 10 years. It also has mangrove swamps, but neither claim to fame had me accepting the offer of a ride in a boat. Instead, I wandered down a narrow lane that leads to the breakwater that curls back by the sea.
Here I discovered a great little bar and restaurant called BJ’s Backyard (www.roatanonline.com/bj_backyard), which is run by a couple from Alabama, who, I strongly suspect, have been on this island for more than 30 years; and I returned a few days later in the wonderful company of Liza and Pedro, who I met on the island. Its small outdoor, wooden patio sits on the harbor mouth, zipping through which are numerous taxi boats full of schoolchildren. It is a community of both blacks and Hispanics, while up the hill is Barrio Lempira (named after the Honduran currency), in which only Spanish is spoken. I had a Port Royal beer there while waiting for a bus to take me over the top of the spine to Pollytilly Bight, the name of which had me making a beeline for it. This is Garifuna country (more of which later).
The mountains by the nearest mainland city, La Ceiba, are very dramatic, and I was lucky enough to stay at the wonderful Lodge at Pico Bonito (www.picobonito.com), which has kilometres of trails winding up the mountainside behind it. I went swimming naked in mountain pools and was fortunate enough to see two amazing species of birds here, the White-collared manakin (Manacus candei) and the definitely-needs-to-be-seen Lovely cotinga (Cotinga amabilis), which it took me four efforts ranging over five hours to get a sight of. The highlights of this area is walking up the Río Cangrejal, in which you need to wade through water, clamber over rocks and jump off boulders into the swift current. Assuming the safety position of knees up, arms out and feet forward, I maneuvered downstream to where I started whitewater rafting (www.jungleriverlodge.com/rafting.html) on class I to IV rapids, although I suspect that the water level was not as high as it could have been to make it truly terrifying.
The second must-do is the train journey (the last one in Honduras) from the dusty town of La Union to the wildlife refuge at Cuero y Salado (www.cueroysalado). I was told that the true benefits of allowing tourists, not cattle, to use this remaining stretch of track have not been fully realised by the locals, most of whom are not, understandably, patient to wait a full 10 years for the tourism master plan to unfurl in all its developmental glory.
The reserve is a peaceful place, especially the watery passage the locals called Mirror River.
The Bay Island of Útila is not as pretty as Roatán, but it seems more laid back, if more laid back is possible. Two dusty roads lead away from the only town, also called Útila, but disappear into a beach and swampy wood, respectively. 
That said, people come here to scuba dive or learn to scuba dive, it being the cheapest place on earth in which to become PADI-certified. I searched for Whale sharks with no luck, but I did see a group of 50 or so Spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris), some of which did spin on their tails. Equally aquatic was the inverted grotto that was the Jade Seahorse (www.jadeseahorse.com), a hotel in which the owners have gone to no imaginary expense to decorate: Small pieces of tile of every colour, plastic bananas, seahorse, bottles, shells, arches, a treetop bar, mirrors, you name it, it is probably in this wondrous pile somewhere. 
It only has six rooms, all wonderful, too, but in the ones next to mine were Barrett and Heidi from Seattle and Joaquin (Norway) and Cyncia (Italy) who met in London and now live in Rome. Fantatsic company.
Back on Roatán, I attended the 211th anniversary celebration of the Garifuna people’s arrival on the isle. I was told that originally the Garifuna (actually, technically, Garinegu is the correct plural term) came from the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, but when the British took over these islands and following some clashes with the locals, the “blacker” members of these people (like all populations there are those who have darker skin, those who have lighter) were shipped off to Honduras. Of the 5,000 who started the journey, only half survived.
The celebration—we saw Honduran president Manuel Zelaya Rosales (known to everyone as Mel) leave in his helicopter—is in the first settlement that they reached, Punta Gorda, which remains their base. The women were dressed up in colourful dresses and skirts, and a man, wearing an elaborate headdress of reeds (see the photo above) that reminded me of photos I had seen of dances in West Africa, sang a song on a stage. The dance they performed is called a punta (which might explain the town’s name, although in Spanish it can be directly translated as “fat point”), and the music is referred to as bunda, which means “backside” in the West African Mandé language. It was all dusty and wonderful and the perfect soundtrack to my latest journey.