40 Fun Facts About Roatan

Which language is the mother tongue of Roatan's native Islanders, unlike most mainland Hondurans?

English took root on Roatan with settlers from British colonies in the 1830s. Islanders still speak their own Caribbean variety of it, though Spanish is the official language of Honduras.

Karl Stanley has taken paying passengers 2,000 feet below Roatan's West End in which kind of custom-built craft?

Submarine Idabel is named after the Oklahoma town where Stanley built it. Passengers sit behind a large plexiglass viewing bubble as it sinks into the lightless deep.

Roatan's barrier reef system is the world's second largest, behind only the one off which country?

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the only one bigger. Roatan's system runs about 700 miles north from Honduras, making it the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere.

Roatan is the largest member of which Honduran archipelago, briefly a British crown colony in the 1850s?

Bay Islands is the name of both the chain and the Honduran department it forms. Britain handed the group back to Honduras within a decade of declaring the colony.

Which explorer landed on Guanaja, Roatan's neighbour, in 1502 during a fourth and final voyage to the Americas?

Christopher Columbus reached Guanaja on July 30. Two weeks later he landed on the Honduran mainland.

Which famous London football club shares its name with the professional team founded on Roatan in 1999?

Arsenal Football Club de Roatan came within one play-off of the Honduran top division in 2007, losing to Deportes Savio.

Which marine mammals are kept and studied at the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences at Anthony's Key Resort?

Bottlenose dolphins have lived at the institute since it opened in 1989 with just two animals. By 2017 the pod numbered twenty-six, most of them born there.

Which venomous Indo-Pacific fish has invaded Roatan's reef, where the marine park trains divers to spear it?

Lionfish have no natural predators in the Caribbean and devour the small fish that keep a reef healthy. Roatan Marine Park trains and licenses visiting divers to hunt them.

Which 1998 hurricane damaged Roatan and destroyed most of the buildings on the neighbouring island of Guanaja?

Mitch swept across Guanaja for two days, levelling most of its forest. It became the deadliest hurricane in Central American history.

Besides tourism, which industry is the other pillar of the economy on Roatan and its Honduran neighbours?

Fishing and tourism together make up about half of the local economy. Many island men also spend months each year crewing merchant ships and cruise liners.

Which type of lizard has an endangered spiny-tailed species that lives only on Roatan and nowhere else on Earth?

Iguana watchers know it as the Roatan spiny-tailed iguana, a species only described by science in 1987. Habitat loss on its one island home threatens it.

The yellow-naped amazon, one reason Roatan is an Important Bird Area, is which kind of bird?

Parrot numbers are crashing: the yellow-naped amazon has lost over 92% of its population in three generations, partly because its talent for mimicking speech feeds the pet trade.

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, which ends near Roatan, also lines the coasts of Mexico, Guatemala and which country?

Belize sits in the middle of the system. The reef starts at Isla Contoy off the tip of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, runs down the Belizean coast and ends off Honduras.

Which cruise company owns the ship terminal at Dixon Cove on Roatan, opened under the name Mahogany Bay?

Carnival runs the terminal for its own brands, with berths for two ships at once. The island's other cruise port, in the main town, is run by a rival group.

Which Honduran currency, used on Roatan, is named after a Lenca chief who resisted the Spanish conquest?

Lempira the chief appears on the one-lempira note. On Roatan US dollars are widely accepted too, though change usually comes back in lempiras.

Which crop did Europeans first encounter in 1502 aboard a trading canoe near Guanaja, Roatan's neighbouring island?

Cacao beans were part of the canoe's cargo. The visitors guessed their value from the crew's reaction whenever a bean was dropped.

Most of Roatan's long-established Islander families trace their roots to 1830s settlers from which British territory?

Cayman Islands seafarers already knew the waters from turtle hunting. They moved after Britain's 1833 abolition of slavery upended the economy at home, and became the island's largest cultural group.

Which Afro-Indigenous people, exiled to Roatan by the British in 1797, founded the island's first lasting settlement?

Garifuna exiles, of mixed African and Carib descent, landed about 2,500 strong after roughly half of those deported had died. Most soon moved on to the mainland.

Which Honduran street food, sold on Roatan, is a flour tortilla folded over refried beans, cream and cheese?

Baleada fillings start with beans, cream and salty hard cheese, the 'simple' version. Eggs, avocado, meat or plantain turn it into a full meal.

Which Roatan town, the island's largest and site of its airport, is named after a 17th-century buccaneer captain?

Coxen Hole remembers Captain John Coxon, who sacked the Spanish town of Santa Marta in 1677 and carried off its bishop. The town itself was only founded in 1835.

Which neighbour of Roatan, smallest of Honduras's three main Caribbean isles, is a diving hub for backpackers?

Utila has more than eighty dive sites around its reefs. Unlike hilly Roatan, it is mostly low swamp, with a few small hills at its eastern end.

Which venomous reptile has a critically endangered species found only on Roatan, known in local dialect as babaspul?

Coral snake species Micrurus ruatanus wears only two colours, black rings separated by red. It grows to about two feet and hunts a lizard also named after Roatan.

Roatan's eastern end, Helene, is split from the main island by a narrow channel through which coastal vegetation?

Mangrove thickets line the channel, which is only about 15 metres wide. Helene is also known by its Spanish name, Santa Elena.

Roatan's international airport honours Juan Manuel Gálvez, who held which role in Honduras from 1949?

President Gálvez's election ended a 16-year dictatorship, and he put nearly a quarter of the national budget into roads. The airport once went by the plainer name Roatan International.

Roatan Marine Park staff once tried to teach which predators to hunt an invasive fish overrunning Caribbean reefs?

Sharks were meant to become a natural check on an invader from the Indo-Pacific. The park also trains human hunters in spearing workshops.

The exiles who landed on Roatan on April 12, 1797 had been deported by the British from which Caribbean island?

Saint Vincent had been their stronghold through two wars against British rule. The deportees knew the island as Yurumein, and small communities of their kin still live there.

Which old pirate anchorage on Roatan shares its name with the notorious buccaneer capital of Jamaica?

Port Royal on Roatan was fortified by the British, and Spain stormed its defences in 1782. Its Jamaican namesake was wrecked by an earthquake in 1692.

Which sport's Caribbean Cup has brought international competitors to the waters off Roatan's West Bay Beach?

Freediving suits West Bay because the water there is unusually calm and clear. The same beach was voted the best in Central America by TripAdvisor users in 2016.

Which port city on the Honduran mainland is the departure point for passenger ferries to Roatan?

La Ceiba takes its name from a giant ceiba tree that once grew beside its old dock. It is the capital of Atlántida, the mainland department that faces Roatan.

Which filibuster, once ruler of Nicaragua, was shot in 1860 after British settlers on Roatan sought his help?

William Walker hoped to carve out a breakaway island government, but a Royal Navy officer arrested him on the mainland and handed him to Honduras, which put him before a firing squad.

The 1782 Battle of Roatan, when Spanish troops overran its British forts, was an episode of which wider conflict?

American Revolutionary War fighting reached Central America after Spain joined against Britain in 1779. The commander who took Roatan, Matías de Gálvez, waited until after Yorktown to strike.

Which village on Roatan's north coast, settled by deported exiles in 1797, is the island's oldest permanent community?

Punta Gorda's founders were the few who stayed when most of their fellow exiles left for the mainland. Their descendants later carried the culture along the Central American coast.

Which shy forest rodent has a species found only on Roatan, noticeably smaller than its Central American cousin?

Agouti species Dasyprocta ruatanica is only about 17 inches long and feeds on almonds, coconuts and hibiscus. It bolts at the sight of people.

Which privately run charter city was set up on Roatan under a 2013 Honduran law allowing self-governing economic zones?

Próspera lodged a claim of more than $10 billion against Honduras after the country repealed the zone law in 2022.

Which tiny island group between Roatan and the Honduran mainland is known for its pale pink boa constrictors?

Cayos Cochinos, the Hog Cays, have no roads or cars. Its two small isles and thirteen coral cays count as part of Roatan's own municipality despite lying about halfway to the mainland.

Which banana variety, the world's main export banana until the 1950s, is known in Spanish as Plátano Roatan?

Gros Michel, or 'Big Mike', was almost wiped out of the trade by Panama disease. Its thick peel and dense bunches had made it ideal for shipping.

The wide, reef-protected inlets that notch Roatan's south coast are known locally by which term?

Bights give the south coast an abundance of deep ports, while the north coast is largely closed off by reef. One settlement is simply called First Bight.

Philip Ashton hid on Roatan in 1723 to escape which pirate captain, then survived as a castaway for 16 months?

Edward Low had seized Ashton off Nova Scotia the year before. Ashton lived on fruit until another castaway left him a knife and gunpowder, and a Salem ship finally rescued him.

Which tree gave Guanaja, Roatan's neighbour, the name chosen for it by its first European visitor in 1502?

Pine woods earned it the name Isle of Pines, though islanders already called it Guanaca. British settlers later bent that into Bonacca.

Most of the exiles landed on Roatan in 1797 soon crossed to which historic port on the Honduran mainland?

Trujillo was also where the 1502 expedition that found Guanaja first touched the mainland. Three villages of the exiles' descendants still line its beach.