Hotel Roi Christophe

Hotel Roi Christophe is a quaint hotel in Cap Haitien, not far from the main road people call Buccaneer (Blvd du Cap-Haitian on the map). It is in a colonial-era building which gives you a close-up experience with the history of Haiti. The rooms are comfortable, with ceiling fan, tv, mini-fridge, and hot water. Complimentary breakfast comes with the stay: eggs, oatmeal, or Haitian spaghetti, with fruit, rolls, and coffee. The restaurant also serves lunch and breakfast. There is a pool, conference rooms, and nice gift shop. Also a ticket counter for Sunrise Airline.

The best part of the hotel for me is all the trees and plants in the courtyard. Yellow-crowned night herons nest here! Plus woodpeckers, banaquits, and palmchat. The endangered white-necked crows and plain pigeons also visit! Unique statues and iron-work, and some canons decorate the grounds.

The hotel is within walking distance (<10 min.) from several restaurants and a tourist souvenir area next to the water. Lots of typical Haitian arts and crafts, but also some unique items, like paper mache birds. Some people are pushy about getting you to buy something, but for the most part it is easy to say no and walk away.

Hotel gift shop

Mozzarella plate

Entrance to the Cap Haitien tourist market

Booths at Cap Haitien tourist market

UCNH - birding and academic hotspot!

Hispaniolan parakeet - endemic, threatened

One hour west of Cap Haitien, off of Rt 1, sits a university whose founders and subsequent presidents prohibited cutting of trees (directions here). Today Université Chrétienne du Nord d'Haïti (UCNH) and the surrounding area of Haut Limbe is home to over 30 species of birds, and is a relaxing place to enjoy large trees full of lianas, bromeliads, and other life you’d expect to see in a tropical forest. Parakeets fly by every day and sometimes hang out on campus, warblers make it their winter home, and woodpeckers, palmchats, red-tailed hawks, and banaquits raise their families here. If you are up for a hike, there are great views from the surrounding hills and you might see a loggerhead kingbird, merlin, or plain pigeon. See here for list of birds.

UCNH also has a snack shop, copy center, bookstore (academic books in French), and library. Agronomy students have a plant nursery on campus, and you can visit a cacao grove and learn about chocolate. Perhaps while visiting you’ll get to see a performance by the fine arts students. Contact me if you’d like to set up a tour and a budding ecotourism student can show you around and take you birding, or to see cacao and plantain/banana groves.

Red-tailed hawk on campus

Plain pigeon - endemic, threatened

White-necked crow - endemic, threatened

Louisiana waterthrush

Hispaniolan lizard-cuckoo - endemic

A sisal factory!

Plantation Dauphin is an old sisal plantation and factory, built in the 1920’s across the bay from Fort Libertie on the north coast of Haiti. Not only is it a piece of Haiti’s booming sisal history (#1 in the western hemisphere in the 1940s), there are birds, as well as fish and other coastal life, such as sea urchins and jellyfish. It is an easy walk around the old buildings, and a cement wall allows you to get close to the sea life.

male and female kestrels

jellyfish and fish

warbler

Tragedy and history at Caracol

I recently visited Caracol Haiti, east of Cap Haitien, with other birders to see all the shore and water birds that still visit the mangrove that has been mostly cut down.  Now salt flats sit where a lush tropical ecosystem once grew.  Yet a variety of birds use the salt pools – we saw 21 species in less than 2 hours, plus unidentifiable warblers.  How many more were there before the mangroves were destroyed?  FoProBiM is an NGO trying to restore the trees, yet it seems like a futile task if people aren’t educated about the importance of mangroves, which I am now more resolved to do in my university and school classes. 

In additional to the surprising variety of birds is the evidence of the history of the area. Conch shell midens, evidence of native pre-Columbian activity, were unearthed where the salt pools were dug, as well as broken pottery from the colonial era.  There is also a canon sticking out of the mud!

Mangroves reduced to salt pools and cow grazing

Trying to reforest the mangroves

Exposed midens of conch shells (all those white things)

Plate shard

Canon in mud

Vue La Montagne Lodge

Front of the hotel - you can't see it when the gate is closed.

While on an expedition near Kenscoff, I spent 2 nights at Vue La Montagne Lodge near Fermate.  The road to it is off of Rt de Turin near Thomassin 38. Turn at the sign on the stone wall.  The entrance is the first gate on the right – it is not marked!  It is a small guest lodge, with hot water and wifi, and fans in the rooms.  The room I was in was on the front side of the building, so didn’t have a view of the mountains, but a walk down the road gives you a view and birding opportunities.  It had a small place to eat in, with the menu posted on the wall.  We all ordered the legume plate for dinner each night, it was a mix of pigeon peas and green peas with carrots and other vegetables.  One night it came with fried potatoes. They have cold drinks, and complimentary breakfast with coffee.  It is a well run and simple place to stay. As of this posting date, google maps says they are permanently closed, but they are not!

Look for the black gate! Hotel is there.

Turn here and go down the road to the black gate.

The legume dish.

Petionville restaurants

Kokoye Restaurant

During a stay at the Allamanda Hotel I ate at Macdoos and Kokoye.  The Lebanese restaurant Macdoos is about 500 ft away from Allamanda on Rue Oge.  It had great food, but loud music and a lot of people on a Friday night.  Most of the customers looked Lebanese. Kokoye is more relaxed and has outdoor seating and good pizza. On Saturday nights the band Extase is on stage. They play a combination of Haitian and Cuban/Latin music - very enjoyable and not so loud you couldn't have conversation. I also visited the Best Western restaurant Le Michel for Saturday morning coffee before heading to the nearby Galeried'art Collection Flamboyant at 9 Darguin.

Le Michel at the Best Western Hotel.

Galerie d'art Collection Flamboyant at 9 Darguin

Galerie d'art Collection Flamboyant at 9 Darguin

Macdoos menu

Macdoos menu

Falafel and vegetarian fatteh at Macdoos

Allamanda Hotel

I had the pleasure of staying at the Allamanda Hotel in Petionville for 7 nights, 2 different buildings and 3 different rooms as I traveled between the coast and Kenscoff.  The hotel operates out of 3 different buildings near the corner of Rue Oge and Rue Metellus. They serve complimentary breakfast in the restaurant Aioli at the main building at the southwest corner. Aioli provides a large space for meetings etc. The dinner menu doesn’t have a lot of vegetarian choices, but the owner helped me select a Greek salad and bannann peze with pickliz, all was very good. The building on the northeast corner has 7 rooms and is great for a group as it has a full kitchen and a common area/lobby. All the rooms were clean with wi-fi, air conditioning and hot water! The hotel is near the Lebanese restaurant Macdoos, and a short walk from the restaurants Quartier Latin and Kokoye next to Place Boyer.

Aioli Restaurant inside the main hotel building.

Greek salad minus tomatoes and olives at my request.

Complementary breakfast

The other building at the northeast corner of Oge and Metellus.