roatan: the island jewel of the western cariibbean

RoatánRoatánThe Island Jewel of the Western CaribbeanThe Island Jewel of the Western Caribbean

w w w . R o a t a n T r a v e l G u i d e . c o m

www.keyholebay.com

The Bay Islands In The WesTern CarIBBean

offer some of the most unspoiled amenities of

the Caribbean. One of these islands is roatan,

where tropical forests, cloudless skies, pristine

beaches and an azure ocean that is home to an

amazing coral reef all combine to envelop one in

a world that many would describe as paradise.

The first eleven 2 bed/2 bath air-conditioned luxury villas, each with unobstructed views of the beach and ocean, offer three different floor plansfrom 2,500 to 3,100 square feet (including covered deck and outside deck area).

The fully-furnished Resort Villas at Pristine Bay are inspired by Caribbean architecture with high, white-washed ceilings; stained wood trusses and trim;Italian terracotta tile roofs; wood shutters; and white plaster walls. Other features include spacious bathrooms with the finest fixtures, large great rooms,full-service kitchens, dining and living areas with French doors opening to expansive terraces, infinity edge pools, and more.

Owners acquire a free-standing villa fee simple (whole ownership) and enjoy full access to all resort amenities. They receive 65 days of annual usagewhile owning the land and building as the villa accumulates hotel villa revenue (evenly pooled and allocated based on owner usage) when they arenot visiting the Resort. Prices range from $825,000 to $895,000 including their own infinity edge pools facing the ocean.

AmenitiesThe Resort Villas at Pristine Bay will feature 60 rooms and suites, a full-service spa, restaurants, bars, 2 large infinity edge pools, 1,000 ft. private whitesand beach, a tennis club, and The Black Pearl Golf Course, designed by Pete and Perry Dye. It boasts incredible ocean views on 14 holes and a sig-nature island-green, par-3 11th hole. A 75-slip, full-service marina near The Black Pearl Clubhouse will provide deep-water access for a wide variety ofvessels. The five-star Resort and Spa at Pristine Bay is scheduled to open in late spring of 2012 and will be managed by Destination Resorts, Ltd., whichalso manages Victoria House Resort on Ambergris Caye, Belize.

Pristine Bay Located on the lush, tropical island of Roatan, 35 miles off the northern coast of Honduras, Pristine Bay is on a 400-plus acre site adjacent to theCaribbean Sea. The azure waters feature the world’s second largest barrier reef off the island coast, famous for world-class fishing and scuba diving,providing one of the truly unique, stunning backdrops for golf in Central America and the western Caribbean.

The Island Jewel of the Western Caribbean

The Resort Villas at Pristine Bay

The Island Jewel of the Western Caribbean

4

Pan Caribbean Capital Partners I, Ltd. / Destination Resorts, Ltd.Pan Caribbean Capital Partners I, Ltd. is a privately held Houston investment partnership. Destination Resorts, Ltd. is headed by J. William Sharman, Jr. whois also the Chairman & CEO of The Lancaster Group, Inc., a hotel developmentand management firm with corporate offices in Houston, Texas. Mr. Sharmanwas also a founder of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, an international consortium of over 500 properties in 70 countries.

Lancaster properties have included the Lancaster Hotel in Houston, Texas; theJefferson Hotel in Washington, D.C.; the Cotton House on Mustique Island inthe Grenadines; the Argyle (now Sunset Tower) in Los Angeles; Hotel Maisonde Ville and The Audubon Cottages in New Orleans; and many others. It hasspecialized in developing, repositioning and managing small luxury hotels andresorts (typically 20 to 175 rooms) for more than 25 years.

Getting ThereRoatan International Airport (RTB) is served on non-stop flights from the UnitedStates (Houston, Atlanta and Newark) on Continental and Delta.

For more information about The Resort Villas at Pristine Bay, contact Riley Sharman at [email protected]

or 310.860.6251. You can also visit www.ResortVillasatPristineBay.com for more information.

5

4

sector, though fishing is also an important source of income for islanders. Roatan is located within 50 minutes of LGS. The island is served by the Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport.

HISTORYThe pre-Columbian indigenous peoples of the Bay Islands are believed to have been related to Paya, Maya, Lenca or Jicaque, which were the cultures present on the mainland. Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage (1502–1504) came to the islands as he visited the neighboring Bay Island of Guanaja. Soon after the Spanish began raiding the islands for slave labor. More devastating for Native American communities was exposure to Eurasian infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, such as smallpox and measles. Diseases ran in epidemics, and no indigenous people survived.

Throughout European colonial times, the Bay of Honduras attracted a diverse array of individual settlers, pirates, traders and military forces, engaged in various economic activities and playing out political struggles between the European powers, chiefly Britain and Spain. Roatán and the other islands were used as frequent resting points for sea travelers. On several occasions, they were subject to military occupation. In 1723/1724 an approximately 20-year-old-man from New England, Philip Ashton, managed to survive as a castaway on the island for sixteen months until he was rescued (see Edward E. Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, 1988, pp. 100–120). During that time they were governed by self-proclaimed King Kyle Edward Chauncey, a red-haired white man leading mostly Spanish speakers among those of European descent.

In contesting with the Spanish for colonization of the Caribbean, the English occupied the Bay Islands on and off between 1550 and 1700. During this time, buccaneers found the vacated, mostly unprotected

The island of Roatan is a place few have seen, yet half a billion in luxury casitas and townhomes are currently under construction. Roatan is magnificent. Clear water, great climate, lush, hilly, friendly,

and modern in the ways you want in a resort destination. Indeed, Roatan is one of those few remaining places that seems untouched…and it’s a little over two hours from Texas!

Roatán, located between the islands of Útila and Guanaja, is the largest of Honduras’ Bay Islands. The island was formerly known as Ruatan and Rattan. It is approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) long, and less than 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) across at its widest point.

The island consists of two municipalities (out of a total of four in the department): Jose Santos Guardiola in the east (named for the former president of Honduras) and Roatán (also including the Cayos Cochinos) further south in the west. The most populous town of the island is Coxen Hole, capital of Roatán municipality, located in the southwest. Other important towns include French Harbour, West End, and Oak Ridge, the capital of Jose Santos Guardiola municipality.

The easternmost quarter of the island is separated by a convoluted channel through the mangroves that is 15 meters wide on the average. This section is called Helene, or Santa Elena in Spanish. Satellite islands at the eastern end are Morat, Barbaretta, and Pigeon Cay. Further west between French Harbour and Coxen Hole is Barefoot Cay. Known as Burial Key until 2001, Barefoot Cay now is privately owned and houses a luxury resort popular with celebrities.

Located near the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the largest barrier reef in the Caribbean Sea (second largest worldwide after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef), Roatán has become an important cruise ship and scuba diving destination in Honduras. Tourism is most important economic

Welcome to RoatanThe Island Jewel of the Western CaribbeanWelcome to RoatanThe Island Jewel of the Western Caribbean

5

islands a haven for safe harbor and transport. English, French and Dutch pirates established settlements on the islands. They frequently raided the cumbersome Spanish cargo vessels carrying gold and other treasures from the New World to Spain.

In 1797, the British defeated the Black Carib, who had been supported by the French, in a battle for control of the Windward Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Weary of their resistance to British plans for sugar plantations, the British rounded up the St. Vincent Black Carib and deported them to Roatán. The majority of Black Carib migrated to Trujillo on mainland Honduras, but a portion remained to found the community of Punta Gorda on the northern coast of Roatán. The Black Carib, whose ancestry includes Arawak and African Maroons, remained in Punta Gorda, becoming the Bay Island’s first permanent post-Columbian settlers. They also migrated from there to parts of the northern coast of Central America, becoming the foundation of the modern-day Garífuna culture.

The majority permanent population of Roatán originated from the Cayman Islands near Jamaica. They arrived in the 1830s shortly after Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1838. The changes in labor force disrupted the economic structure of Caymanian culture. Caymanians were largely a seafaring culture and were familiar with the area from turtle fishing and other activities. Former Caymanian slaveholders were among the first to settle in the seaside locations throughout primarily western Roatán. Former slaves also migrated from the Cayman Islands, in larger number than planters, during the late 1830s and 1840s. Altogether, the former Caymanians became the largest cultural group on the island.

For a brief period in the 1850s, Britain declared the Bay Islands its colony. Within a decade the Crown ceded the territory formally back to Honduras. British colonists were sent though, and asked William Walker, a freebooter with a private army, to help end the crisis in 1860 by invading Honduras; he was captured upon landing in Trujillo and executed there.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the island populations grew steadily and established new settlements all over Roatán and the other islands. Settlers came from all over the world and played a part in shaping the cultural face of the island. Islanders started a fruit trade industry which became profitable. By the 1870s it was purchased by American interests, most notably the New Orleans and Bay Islands Fruit Company. Later companies, the Standard Fruit and United Fruit Companies became the foundation for modern-day fruit companies, the industry which gave Honduras the sobriquet “banana republic”.

• AmericAn luxury estAtes •

The 20th century saw continued population growth resulting in increasing economic changes, and environmental challenges. A population boom began with an influx of Spanish-speaking Mestizo migrants from the Honduran mainland. In the last decades they tripled the original resident population. Mestizo migrants settled primarily in the urban areas of Coxen Hole and Barrio Los Fuertes (near French Harbour). In these areas Spanish is common, with English speakers more common among descendants of early colonists, as well as in the other areas inhabited chiefly by islanders rather than former mainlanders.

But in terms of population and economic influence, the mainlander influx was dwarfed by the overwhelming tourist presence in most recent years. Numerous American, Canadian, British, New Zealand, Australian and South African settlers and entrepreneurs engaged chiefly in the fishing industry, and later, provided the foundation for attracting the tourist trade. The rapid and dramatic demographic changes that Roatán has experienced in the 21st century has contributed to the complexity of the environmental challenges of the island.

In 1998, Roatán suffered some damage from Hurricane Mitch, temporarily paralyzing most commercial activity. Native islanders claimed the storm broke three previously undisturbed Aguila shipwrecks.

CARACOLESThe Caracol people are an English-speaking people who have been established in Northern Honduras (specifically, the Bay Islands) since the early 19th century. They are chiefly of European and British-Afro-Caribbean descent. Caracol is Spanish for “conch, snail or shell”, and relates the people of the Bay Islands to their unique environment and their sea-faring culture. In its current usage, the term caracol refers to all people born in the Bay Islands region, and their descendants. The region of the Bay Islands encompasses the three major islands of Roatan, Utila, and Guanaja, and the smaller islands or keys. These people are also called “Islanders,” especially locally.

Over time the form of English spoken by the Caracol has changed. The language differs mostly in morphology but also in pronunciation and accent and, to a lesser extent, in syntax and vocabulary, from the English of the other British Caribbean colonies. They are similar enough to be mutually intelligible.

This article is republished from Wikipedia.

Inspirato is a private club which requires a non-refundable Initiation Fee. Reservations vary in price by property and date, and are subject to availability. Members-only rates as of 1/1/12 and subject to change. © 2012, Inspirato LLC. Inspirato Residence, Punta Cana Sleeps 12 from $695/night

STARTING WITH THE PRICEWE’VE REDEFINED LUXURY TRAVELWith an Inspirato membership, you’re guaranteed to save. Take advantage of our

exceptional availability and variety of vacation options – from residences large

enough for the entire family to intimate villas and penthouse suites perfect for two

– all at deeply discounted nightly rates. Plus, members enjoy hassle-free vacation

planning, an onsite concierge and daily housekeeping for the length of their stay.

Discover the many benefits of Inspirato. Call 888.546.5008 today to learn more about special membership offers.

AmericAnL u x u r y E s t a t E sAmericAnL u x u r y E s t a t E s

Visit us online atwww.AmericanLuxuryEstates .com

Your Gateway to Exceptional Luxury Real Estate Properties Throughout the Nation

At AMERICAN LUXURY ESTATES you will find the finest luxury real estate properties represented by the most

prominent luxury real estate brokers. Participating real estate broker companies contribute their private mailing

lists of qualified individuals in their area to whom our quarterly Luxury Real Estate magazine is sent. A digital

version of this luxury real estate publication is also sent via the Internet to high net worth individuals worldwide.

Imagine a natural eden where you can make friendswith a dolphin. Dive or snorkel pristine walls& reefs. Gallop on a remote beach or fly through a jungle. Then, tomorrow, start all over again.800.227.3483 / 954.929.0090 | www.anthonyskey.com/usa | [email protected] | Mention code USA11

All the best adventures.Above & below the waves.

Roatan • Bay IslandsHonduras

AKR_USAToday_halfpg_2011_LO5_bleed:halfpg trim 8.0 x 5.1875 9/7/11 12:03 PM Page 1

roatan: the island jewel of the western cariibbean

Documents