We recently posted a story I wrote after a tour of Honduras, called Honduras Above the Water.

For a variety of good reasons, I’ve never gotten certified as a scuba diver. I’m usually pretty content to go snorkeling anyway and haven’t had some “must do before I die” driving force to get me under the water. As I traveled around Honduras I discovered that I was not alone. While Roatan remains the big draw for the country, mostly attracting divers, there’s a lot more to the area than fish and coral below the surface.

So I spent a few days on Roatan with the other non-divers, then set out for Pico Bonito National Park and then the archeological ruins of Copan. From a tourism standpoint it’s still a place in flux, still finding its feet, but it’s one of the best values on the planet if you don’t need marble palaces and a steady flow of hip fusion food piled in a tower. Go check out our wrap-up, or go read the reviews of the best hotels in Honduras.

I got back from Honduras recently and have posted some new reviews of some of the best hotels on Roatan Island and one new one for Copan.

All our Honduras hotels come with a caveat or two I must admit. There is not one hotel in the whole country that is on par with the high-end resorts in Mexico or Argentina, but things are improving all the time as more tourists (and more demanding tourists) join the scuba divers that have been the mainstay there. So don’t expect any of these places to blow you away with their opulence or dazzling amenities, but each is special in its own way. Where would I go back to tomorrow if I could? The Lodge at Pico Bonito. I can’t remember the time I last felt that relaxed and at one with the natural world.

Here are the new Honduras hotel reviews:

Hotel Marina Copán — Copán Ruinas, Honduras

Barefoot Cay — Roatan, Honduras

Infinity Bay Spa & Beach Resort — Roatan, Honduras

Palmetto Bay Plantation — Roatan, Honduras

I recently returned from a trip to Roatan Island in Honduras, where the cement trucks are very, very busy these days. One of the best–if not the best–beaches on the island is West Bay, which has a string of hotels and restaurants on a beautiful crescent stretch of sand. There’s a new condo complex which is also operating as a hotel: Infinity Bay. It’s not finished yet, but the essentials are ready: rooms, pool, and bar. You can read the review of Infinity Bay Roatan on the Luxury Latin America site, but here’s a quick video tour to give you a taste.

This could be the beginning of the end for the formerly uncrowded Honduran island of Roatan. As the Wall Street Journal reported in The Next Place in the Sun, the island could soon turn into just another tacky Caribbean cruise port.

Royal Caribbean just inked a deal to build a $30 million extension to the island’s cruise terminal, while Carnival is spending $50 million on its own port of call, which it says can handle as many as 7,000 passengers daily when it opens in 2009.

This scares some residents, but others are cackling with joy at the thought of getting some bucks off these short-stay stopovers, despite all the damage to the reefs and the island’s character. To me it’s just depressing to see yet another island with a lot going for it succumbing to the pressure to open up to mammoth ships. Mass tourism wins again.

Apparently this is all driven by the average Joe and Jane tiring of ports like Cozumel, which is “packed with 15 ships on busy days.” John Tercek, vice president of commercial development for Royal Caribbean is quoted in the article saying, “People like to brag at a cocktail party, I’ve been to some place you haven’t.” As if stopping in a cruise ship port for a few hours is “being somewhere.” Good god.

As for me, I’m going to try to make it down there in ‘08, while I can tour the island and kick back on the beach without seeing a massive floating hotel right by the shore. I may be adding a new hotel or two to our current listing, Anthony’s Key Resort (pictured here).

We now have detailed reviews posted for the best Guatemala luxury hotels and the best Honduras luxury hotels. Here’s the full press release that went out last week.

Neither of these destinations have a full bounty of upscale hotels and resorts as they just haven’t had the traffic to justify it so far. This is changing rather rapidly however, especially as Americans realize what great surprises we have a few hours away on a plane, with no jet lag. Not to mention that in these two countries, the travel dollar is faring as well as it ever did. For the price of a small double room in Europe, you can splash out in the best suite in town.

Granted, these hotels still have a way to go before they’ll rank with the average of our listed hotels in Mexico, Costa Rica, or Argentina, but give them time…