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Many of Haiti's scarce hotel rooms (only 1,040) are located in Petionville, a relatively posh and attractive Port-au-Prince suburb on the side of a steep mountain. Some of the most luxurious are in the El Rancho Hotel, which has four $150-a-day suites complete with electrically powered draperies, mahogany furniture, and maroon marble bathtubs with rather delicate plumbing. (One of the establishment's few drawbacks: incessant music by the pool.) Petionville is also the site of most of Haiti's elegant night life. Among the restaurants are La Lanterne, known for its shrimp soup with brandy, pate maison and red snapper, and Chez Gerard, another French restaurant that may well be Haiti's best.
Drums. Another nighttime activity sought out by most tourists is a voodoo ceremony. For a small fee they are invited to witness frenzied drumming and dancing, the inscription of strange patterns in the ground, and often the sacrifice of a chicken. What they usually see is a pale imitation of authentic rites. The actual rituals in which the Haitians invoke their loas (gods) take place far off in the hills in the dark of night. The drums sometimes heard during the day are simply beating cadences for corn-bites, or cooperative work teams.
Travel in Haiti is always exciting, if not comfortable. Most Haitians, both in urban and rural areas, travel in "tap-taps," pickup trucks with bench-equipped wooden cabins built onto them. Each bus is gaily painted in many colors and designs, and each has a flamboyant name (for example, "The Scorn of Woman," "The Miracle" and "The Wrath of God") that signifies to Haitians that the bus plys a neighborhood route, for example, or has a downtown destination. All Haitian vehicles race wildly along streets and roads crowded with pedestrians, their horns honking incessantly. Miraculously, the accident rate is low.
For the tourist, the best form of transportation is the chauffeured car, which can be hired for $3 an hour or $20 a day. Those with license plates beginning with the letter L generally have drivers who speak some English-a great help to American tourists in a country where 80% of the population speak only Creole, a French-based language that Parisians nonetheless find incomprehensible.
Unlike the grim days under Papa Doc, tourists no longer need military passes to travel in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince. On the way to the beaches, visitors and Haitians alike must stop at an army checkpoint-a hangover from the days when Haiti feared invasions from everywhere. The guard, however, merely asks their destination and then waves the car on.
Perhaps the most spectacular of the limited rural tours is the trip up the mountain road from Port-au-Prince to