San Pedro Sula, Honduras ? Planes shuttled tourists from island resorts in a desperate airlift Monday as Hurricane Felix bore down on Honduras and Belize. But thousands of Miskito Indians were stranded along a swampy coastline where the Category 4 storm was expected to make landfall.

Grupo Taca Airlines provided special free flights to the mainland, quickly touching down and taking off again to scoop up more tourists. Some 1,000 people were evacuated from the Honduran island of Roatan, popular for its pristine reefs and diving resorts. Another 1,000 were removed from low-lying coastal areas and smaller islands.

Felix’s top winds weakened slightly to 135 mph as it headed west, but forecasters warned that it could strengthen again before landfall along the Miskito Coast early Tuesday. From there, it was projected to rake northern Honduras, slam into southern Belize on Wednesday and then cut across northern Guatemala and southern Mexico, well south of Texas.

A storm surge of more than 18 feet above normal tides could devastate Indian communities along the Miskito Coast, a swampy, isolated region straddling the Honduras-Nicaragua border where thousands live in wooden shacks, get around on canoes and subsist on fish, beans, rice, cassava and plantains.

“There’s nowhere to go here,” said teacher Sodeida Rodriguez, 26, who was hunkering down in a concrete shelter.

Over the weekend, Felix toppled trees, flooded homes and forced tourists indoors on the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, but caused little damage. It then grew to a Category 5 storm Monday before losing a bit of its punch.

If Felix regains Category 5 winds before striking land, it would be the first time in recorded history that two such killer storms have made landfall in the same season, hurricane specialist Jamie Rhome said in Miami.

At 10 p.m. CDT, Felix remained a fearsome hurricane, though it had a very small wind field, with hurricane-force winds extending just 30 miles from its center. It was centered 145 miles east-southeast of the Nicaragua-Honduras border, moving west at 20 mph.