Six reasons to vacation in Haiti.
The intrepid Caribbean country is ready for its tourism close-up
It took a ride on a minibus, a transfer to a flatbed truck and then a horseback trek up a rocky mountainside to get here.
We arrive jostled and sweaty and unprepared for the very thing we came for: La Citadelle Laferriere, a spectacular 200-year-old stone-and-brick fortress built by the freed slaves who forced out their powerful French colonizers.
It sits atop a 910-metre-high peak in northern Haiti, surrounded in all directions by velvet-green mountains. If this were Tuscany or Andalusia, or even the Dominican Republic next door, this UNESCO heritage site would be filled with tourists.
But it’s quiet and almost deserted. On a clear, sunny day, there are only a dozen of us here, not including guides, in what may be one of the most captivating places on Earth.
That’s because Haiti is not anywhere near the top of most people’s bucket list. When they think Haiti, they don’t imagine glorious scenery or proud historic monuments — they picture poverty and despair.
They remember the television footage of the deadly 2010 earthquake that toppled thousands of buildings in Port-auPrince and surrounding cities and killed more than 300,000 people.
But while the rest of us have been feeling sorry for Haiti, Haiti’s been busy getting back on its feet. Though much remains to be done, most of the earthquake debris and tent camps have been cleared away and the government has embarked on an ambitious campaign to bolster tourism.
In Port-au-Prince on the Champ de Mars, the sprawling plaza outside the ruined National Palace, a 5,000-seat amphitheatre, surrounded by artisan booths and cafés, is expected to be ready this summer. A 175-room Marriott Hotel will open downtown in 2015, one of several new international luxury hotels.
At the airport in Port-au-Prince, the whole 100-car taxi fleet is being replaced, and the government has flown in Haitian-born taxi drivers from Montreal to give the locals dispatch and customerservice lessons.
Teachers from Montreal’s hotel and restaurant school have come to train a new generation of chefs, waiters and hotel workers.
“We have history, culture and natural beauty, and we have done colossal work to get ready to welcome tourists back to Haiti,” Tourism Minister Stephanie Villedrouin explained after lunch at Parc Historique de la Canne a Sucre, an old sugar cane plantation converted into a museum and restaurant.
“We don’t want charity. We want people to come to Haiti and eat and drink with us, listen to our music and be our guests.”
Villedrouin knows she can’t compete with the large, welldeveloped resorts in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
What she wants is for Haiti to become a different kind of destination, one for “cultural explorers” interested in food, history, art and music, or adventurers looking for something more than an all-inclusive week on the beach.
It’s not an impossible dream. Haiti was once known as the pearl of the Antilles. Movie stars and millionaires used to come to buy art, drink rum and soak up the sun. Air France flew twice a week from Paris to Port-au-Prince. Canadians and Americans filled the hotels.
One of Club Med’s most beautiful resorts was built along the Cote des Arcadins, a stretch of sandy white beaches and hidden coves nestled under steep mountains, a 45-minute drive south of the capital.
But the brutal dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier and successive decades of political unrest put an end to the golden era. The Club Med closed, and the tourists stayed away.
Slowly, visitors are returning, many of them expatriates, business people, the sons and daughters of those who left in droves in the 1960s and ’70s.
The old Club Med, with its fabulous modernist architecture, has reopened as a less luxurious Haitian-owned resort called Club Indigo, with the same exquisite beaches and grounds.
Not far away, the Wahoo Bay Beach Club and Resort offers boutique-hotel-style rooms set amid lush gardens overlooking the turquoise sea.
Still, a vacation in Haiti isn’t for the faint-hearted. The roads are potholed and garbage-strewn. Protests erupt sporadically and sometimes turn violent, and there’s no overlooking the extreme poverty in which large segments of the population live.
The best way to visit Haiti is on an organized tour or with a local guide such as Tour Haiti.
Jean Cyril Pressoir, who has lived all his life in Portau-Prince, except for three years in Montreal studying anthropology, runs Tour Haiti with his father, offering tailor-made private and group tours all over the country.
A swashbuckler of a guide who wears beaded bracelets and a madras shirt, Pressoir has a way of making a place come alive.
He takes visitors into his favourite restaurants and bars and sneaks them into hidden home distilleries for a shot. He organizes bike tours, museum visits and hikes to distant waterfalls. He knows where there’s voodoo rock playing on Thursday night and which street seller makes the best griot pork.
“We may have tons of problems, but we have soul. We have magic. Haiti is authentic,” Pressoir says.