mjnansen:
Roatanman- Can I ask you when is the last time you actually went shopping on Roatan? With the cruise ships things have really started changing. Yes, many things are still imports, but there are more and more local arts and crafts for sale..
Point taken. I'm usually diving. Yeah, I've pretty well given up on shopping, long gone are the days of finding simple Honduran crafts... even the wooden boxes and hate to say it- even the "chickens" toy are imports, but there does seem to be a resurgance of the more artistic higher end stuff.
The fused glass that you mention is likely that of a former CCV divemaster Enrrique and his very creative girlfriend. In the past (1980's) one could purchase and ship elegantly crafted Honduran wood furniture, including easily shipped slat chairs... those days disappeared.
There are four distinct market areas on Roatan, the first was "downtown" Coxen Hole. This is where you will find the greatest concentration of "bricks and mortar" stores. They do come and go, and suffer the common vagary of all Honduran retail- failure to resupply popular items as they sell out.
The Cruise Ship dock and it's Straw Market came next. This shanty town typical of almost any strwa market in the Mar Caribe caters exclusively to the cruise ship tourist and is where the Guatemalan import invasion began.
This was carried over to the West End where the merchandise is similar (as far as I am aware) and the buildings are more substanial than the cruise ship docks.
Then, politics (money) the way they are, the big boys of the island developed their own shopping destination zone for cruise shippers, just East of the airport near Dixon Cove. Plans are/were to move it along to restaurants, dolphin encounters and marina as the money accrued. Is it still operational? Don't know for sure.
On Roatan, it has always been about
location. The cruise shippers were the most visible money spenders, they did it all at once, and you knew when they were coming. What more can a merchant ask for? Thus begat the Straw Market on the dock area.
Still, people saw the cabs idling and figured they had to be going somewhere... ahh- Coxen Hole which just got paved streets in 1998 but was sorely in need of making them 1 way steets since 1990.
As word spread among the pod people that they could beach it, sun, drink or even pester Flipper, off they would head to the West End area. Merchants followed.
These areas represented a convenient triangle of transportation of the pod people and merchants. Once again, the problem with sales is that they were sporadic, predictable and intense when they did occur. This fact caused major disappointment in vacationers who were ther for the week. Riding into town for shopping on
non-cruise ship days usually meant closed stores. In no time of any of my visits did I ever find the downtown duty free shop opens for business. Never.
Then came the development money from the Mayor and his wealthier friends. The destination shopping mall concept. All well and good, but waaaay out of the way for most cruise shippers, it would take up the entire day on Roatan.
I tell you this story because the location and availablity drives the merchants and their longevity. It's really the same anywhere, but pod people have a different frenetic perspective as they take shore leave.
I sit at CCV and dive my 5x a day, knowing that 5 to 6 artisan merchants will be stopping by for 4 hours on any given day to display their wares both primitive and elegant- either with equal charm and desirability. Other places, even AI's, you don't get this, so yes, I am spoiled and currently poorly informed as to what is currently available.
In Cayman, the merchants used to congregate in the town center, the cornerstone being Bernie Pessman's jewelry shop featuring Black Coral and Gold with Diamonds. As real estate priced itself beyond the artist's level, word-of-mouth let it be know that this or that artist could be found if you drove for 4 miles and looked for the pink rocks.
If anyone has taken the 20 minute walk down the street in the Galapagos from the liveaboard launch dock to the Darwin Research Station... if you haven't stopped and gawked at the true art shops that pack that steet... you missed on heck of a free art gallery on the scale of downtown Aspen.
Roatan has a long way to go before reaching that concentration of artistic display, but the seeds of excellence are germinating.
Right now? Come to dive. Shop as a one day off-gassing pursuit. There will be more later!
