Roatán

Roatán is a long green island sixty kilometres off Honduras, the largest of the Bay Islands, with the Mesoamerican reef — the second-longest barrier reef on Earth — lying ten minutes from its northern shore: the wall drops close, the coral is healthy, and the price of learning to dive here has been, for a generation of travellers, the kindest in the Caribbean. The islanders speak an English that came with Cayman settlers and pirates, the Garífuna of Punta Gorda have kept their drums since 1797, and West End keeps the dive shops while West Bay keeps the sand.

The traveller dives or snorkels every day the sea allows — the wall off West End, the wrecks, the shallow gardens of West Bay where the reef starts at the beach —; takes the certification if it never has, in four days of warm water; walks West Bay at sunset; eats baleadas from a roadside comedor and lionfish, the invader, wherever it is served; visits Punta Gorda for the Garífuna village and its punta drumming; watches the iguanas and the parrots at the sanctuaries; and, with a boat day, goes to Cayos Cochinos, the small cays with the clearest water in Honduras.

The Guide's honesty: cruise ships call at Coxen Hole and Mahogany Bay several days a week and fill West Bay by noon — check the port schedule and dive on those mornings —; sandflies at dusk are the island's one plague, and repellent is the cure; the mainland's reputation for danger has never described the island, where normal care is enough; the reef needs reef-safe cream and buoy-anchored boats; and prices have risen with the island's fame, though the dive courses remain the region's honest bargain.