Roatan Resorts & Hotels
Utila & Guanaja Resorts & Hotels
Honduras Mainland Resorts & Hotels
About Roatan
- Location
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Roatan is part the Bay Islands of Honduras. Honduras is located in Central America and has borders with Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Honduran North Coast borders the Caribbean Sea while a small section of the Southern Coast borders the Pacific Ocean.
The Bay Islands are located between 70 and 40 miles from the Honduran North Coast in the Caribbean Sea. The Bay Islands consist of over 70 islands and cays. The larger three islands are Roatan, Utila and Guanaja.
Roatan is the largest of the Bay Islands and is approx 30 miles long and from 1 to 4 miles wide. A mountain ridge runs along the spine of the island and reaches approx 800 feet above sea level at its highest point.
- Weather
The climate of Roatan is tropical, hot and humid, though constant sea breezes keep the islands average temperature between 70°F and 90°F. The yearly average temperature is 82°F. The rainiest months in Roatan are October through January and the average rain fall is 87 inches.
- Flora, Fauna and Marine Life
The warm tropical climate of Roatan supports a wide variety of plant life and eco-systems.
Roatan is home to tropical forest, which is home to a wide range of species including fruit trees such as Hog Plum, Nance and Strangler Fig. You will also find bromeliads, ferns, orchids, bamboo, and palms.
A variety of plants are found along Roatan´s tropical beaches. Coconut palms, coco plums, sea grapes, almond trees and a variety of vines and flowering plants create that special beach environment we all love.
Mangrove forests are found throughout Roatan and play an important role in protecting the coastal shoreline from storm and wind damage. Mangroves are also important breeding grounds for marine life.
Roatan is also very rich in local wildlife. You will find twelve mammal species inhabit Roatan. The majority being bat species, you also have Agoutis, two varieties of rats, Opossum and White-tailed Deer.
About 40 reptile species are found in Roatan including the endangered Hawksbill turtle. You also find six species of frogs, 15 lizard species and 13 snake species.
Over 120 species of birds live on Roatan, approx only 40 species actually live and nest on Roatan, the rest are migratory birds. The Yellow-nape Parrot is found in Roatan and is an endangered species.
Roatan's coral reef is one of the most beautiful reef systems in the world. It is easily accessible from the shore in many spots making it great for not only divers but snorkelers also. The West End Marine Reserve covers the Western tip of Roatan and is a protected area which is home to a majority of the Roatan dive sites and home to some of the Caribbean's best diving.
- History of Roatan
The Bay Islands were originally inhabited by the Paya Indians, a semi-nomadic tribe that lived in non-permanent structures, and carried out subsistence farming and fishing as well as trade with other tribes from the mainland. They also produced simple ceramic items, the remnants or shards of which are today affectionately referred to as “yaba ding dings”.
The first recorded interaction between Europeans and the Paya was in 1502 when Christopher Columbus, during his fourth voyage to the new world, landed on Guanaja and traded with them for food supplies and water.
During the 1500s, Honduras was claimed by Spanish Conquistadors, who enslaved the Paya and began to use the islands to provision their ships, but did not establish permanent settlements. Not long after, English pirates seized the opportunity to raid the Spanish supplies. Thus began the battle for control of the Bay Islands. England was interested in the rich stands of timber and sent soldiers and colonizers to establish outposts along the length of the Caribbean coastline and the Bay Islands, while Spain was colonizing and mining the mainland. The clash between the Spanish and English dragged on for nearly three centuries.
The first recorded British presence on the Bay Islands was the short-lived colony founded by William Claiborne in Port Royal (1638 to 1642) which was largely comprised of log-cutters turned buccaneers who were eventually ran off by the Spanish Navy.
History again shows British occupation in 1742, with the formal construction of a naval fortification in Port Royal, which was a strategic move as part of the British attempt to gain possession of the Central American coast. Records show that by 1775 the fort was well established and inhabited. A famous and perhaps the first official map of the island of Roatan was surveyed and drawn by Lt. Thomas Jeffery's.
During this time, lured by the Spanish galleons laden with gold, silver, slaves, and spices, the Bay Islands became a Dutch, English, and French pirate hideout. It has been estimated that at one time up to 5,000 buccaneers were using the islands as a safe haven including such illustrious privateers such as Henry Morgan and John Coxen, after whom Coxen Hole is named.
After a fierce battle in Port Royal in 1782, the Spanish were able to gain control of Roatan and subsequently removed all the native Indians to the mainland for abetting the British. But it wasn’t until 1798, when approximately 2,500 Garifuna (Afro-American descendents of shipped wrecked African slaves and Arawak Indians from the island of Saint Vincent) were forcibly removed from the island of St.Vincent by the British and stranded on Roatan that the first real settlement was established. Although most of these Garifuna were later transferred to Trujillo by the Spanish, a few stayed on and formed the village of Punta Gorda, which survives today. You can visit Punta Gorda for a cultural immersion visit and enjoy a Garifuna meal and see traditional Garifuna dances.
Although the Spaniards were in control of the islands, they made no attempts at establishing a colony there and in 1821 the Central American Federation declared independence from Spain and claimed sovereignty over the islands, but still they remained virtually abandoned until the late 1820s and the 1830s when British colonizers (both white slave bosses and negro emancipated slaves) began arriving from both the Cayman Island and Jamaica. It is from these families that many of today’s Bay Islanders are descended.
By 1842, a thriving British community had again formed in the Bay Islands. The colonists, in protest of the Central American Federation, hauled down the Central American flag, hoisted up the Union Jack, and claimed Roatan for Britain. Bonacco (Guanaja) and Utila soon followed with the raising of the Union Jack. In 1850, Royal naval estimates a population of “five to six thousand”.
In 1852, at the request of the colonists, the British Governor of Jamaica became the governor of “Utila, Rattan, Helene, Barbarette, Morat, and Bonacco”, which was officially recognized by Her Majesty Queen Victoria as “the Crown Colony of the Bay Islands”.
Unfortunately for the colonists, word reached Washington of this development, which was viewed in direct violation of the Clayton Bulwer Treaty that stated that neither the US or Britain could claim or seek to possess more colonies or possessions in the Western Hemisphere. A war of words raged between Washington and London for years until 1860 when the British Consul in Comayagua agreed to relinquish possession of the Bay Islands as well as the Moskitia.
On June 1, 1861 the Bay Islands became the “Departamento de las Islas de la Bahia”.