16:10N 88:05W

 

The Honduran island of Guanaja was like nothing we’ve ever seen before – quirky, intriguing and thoroughly likeable.   Mountainous and green it’s surrounded by a myriad of reefs, cays and shoal water and we tentatively navigated our way in dodging reefs.  There is one main town, Guanaja Settlement, which is on a tiny island a kilometre offshore from the mainland.  Mosquitoes apparently drove locals to the island where they built houses on stilts over the water to avoid them.  This is mosquito country!!  There are no roads or cars on Guanaja and there only appear to be a handful of houses on the main island.  Locals use boats for transport and there are canals intersecting the island for access to houses.

 

Buildings on the island are linked by a serious of wooden planked walkways over canals.  Hurricane Mitch wreaked devastation here a few years ago, flattening vegetation and demolishing houses and rebuilding is still going on.  Concrete walkways are slowly replacing many of the wooden ones that didn’t survive.  There are some pretty amazing houses (foreign owned) on tiny cays between the reef and the island.  The locals tend to build very basic wooden houses – many painted in bright colours and others left to weather.  The island is home to a huge lobster and prawn fishing fleet and the boats are beautifully maintained and painted all shades from white to bright blue and orange. 

 

We arrived on Thursday midday and, once inside the reef, headed to Guanaja Settlement to find immigration and customs.  As we wandered down one narrow walkway we heard a dreadful din and soon realised we were walking past the local jail!  Peering through the bars of a well locked steel door was one of the blackest and unfriendliest faces we have ever seen.  He certainly wasn’t happy about being locked up.  A bit further on stood two policeman holding pump action shotguns guarding the bank which apparently was robbed a few years ago. 

 

Check in took several hours.  Everything here is done by hand or ancient typewriter and it’s a laborious process especially when we try to do it in Spanish.  With formalities completed we headed to a lovely anchorage a mile or so away and had a quiet night.  Next morning we woke to a stiff breeze and, after much discussion, decided to do yet another overnight sail towards Guatemala.  The winds in this area are notoriously light so with 20knots blowing out there we didn’t want to miss it.  So another round of officialdom.......checking out this time.....the bonus being the fresh produce boat from Honduras had arrived in the town and so we stocked up with papaya, mango and bananas.

 

We headed away just on midday and had fantastic winds all afternoon and through the night – 15-20knots with gusts up to 30 and Bandit averaged 6 knots.  We had planned to stop at Hunting Cay (Belize) and spend the afternoon and night there to get our last snorkelling in before heading to the mouth of the Rio Dulce tomorrow but as I write this we’re watching a huge thunderstorm on the horizon...meaning cloud cover which makes an entrance into the reef impossible.  We may head on to the Rio Dulce.