Tuesday & Wednesday 8-9 Mar, Honduras days 6 & 7, Guanaja: Exploring the west coast by dinghy.
These two days see us remaining at anchor in the shelter of Michael’s Rock with a stunningly natural vista all around us. Each night the easterly trade winds blew hard. Sometimes with gusting up to 35kts cascading down from our protecting hillside. For the first night this meant a rather disturbed sleep until we became confident the anchor would hold OK in the seagrass. Thereafter, even with the gusting wind raging in the rigging and apparently trying to rip the bimini off, we managed to sleep reasonably well.
But during the daytime, and especially the mornings, the winds abated allowing us to head off to explore the coast in the dinghy.
The first day we headed south, passing pristine unspoiled white beaches with turquoise water in front of them. Along the shore there are several improvised jetties, leading to apparently nowhere. Maybe a fisherman has his hut somewhere buried in the undergrowth beyond.
About 1.5 miles away, we enter Bahia Pine Ridge, a wide-open bay at the head of which lies the entrance to a canal that goes all the way across the island to the eastern shore. It seems rather odd that an island which has virtually zero roads, does have a canal! As soon as we are into it, the water turns brown. The dredged section is just 1 mile long and lined with mangrove. Likely it was originally a mangrove channel that has simply been kept open and dredged.
At the far end is the airport which has no roads to it. There is a very small terminal, which we find padlocked and deserted, and a boat dock where air travelers take water transport to their destination. We tie the dinghy up and whilst sitting on some shady seats outside the terminal we troll the news on the internet, while we have some good phone signal on this eastern side of the island.
The next day we head north along the coast. Aiming to get to Mangle Bight settlement about 3 miles away. Again, we hug the shoreline, sometimes in only a few centimeters of water, skimming over the seagrass and small patches of coral, which are easy to spot in the morning sunlight. As we turn the corner into the bight, the settlement appears, and for the first time on Guanaja we see cars and motor bikes. They have a road! We lock the dinghy to one of the many semi-abandoned jetties and very carefully walk to the road taking care not to fall through a rotten plank. We joke that while the dinghy may stay locked to the jetty, there is every chance the jetty itself will drift away in its dilapidated state.
The settlement is very basic. Simple housing, simple folks and zero sign of foreigners. Everyone is very friendly as usual as we walk from one end to the other taking in the scene. Occasionally we poke our heads into a small shop to see if they have any fruit or veg. But all shelves are bare. Apparently, the supply boat arrives today, and they will again be stocked with fresh produce tomorrow. Sounds a bit like the situation in the Bahamas.
While we are here, we decide to take a taxi over to Savannah Bight settlement on the other side the island. After a short distance in the rickety taxi, the driver pulls over, toots his horn and a young lad comes out of a house carrying a large household fan. They try to fit it in the front seat, but when that doesn’t work, it ends with the fan head in the seat and its leg and base hanging outside the window with me holding it in place via my arm out the back window! Taxis are multipurpose here, it seems.
The journey is just 2 miles and takes us through a lush green valley with palms and mango trees. But surprisingly no sign of any cultivation whatsoever. Food delivery from the mainland must be cheap enough to discourage any grow-your-own. Either that, or the MO of these people is sea life gathering, not farming.
Savannah Bight is a similar settlement to Mangle Bight, a thin strip of dwellings along the edge of a bight. Though here there are lots of older wooden houses build on stilts over the water. We wonder why this is. It’s not like there is a shortage of land to build on. Maybe for easy sanitation? And on that subject, we observe that most dwellings close to the sea have separate toilet huts built next to them, either on stilts over the sea or with pipes leading to the sea. No need to guess how their sewage is managed!
In the small harbour there is a boat being unloaded. Its decks appear to be covered in piles of soil and there is a team of men shoveling this “soil” into bags which are then thrown onto trucks.
We sit in the shade in a snack bar for a while and catch up on the internet and news while sipping iced coffee and 2 hot dogs. It’s surprising what you can buy here!
We wander for a while, but as it’s close to midday and very hot, we decide to head back.
This time we take a tuk-tuk. No joke, they really do have 3-wheeler tuk-tuks. The exact same model you would find in India or Thailand. We jump in the backseat which is just big enough for the 2 of us. Then, 2 guys (complete with machetes!) which the driver calls over also jump aboard! One squeezes into the back next to Oana and the other (his father) squeezes onto the driver’s seat in front. And even then, we are not done yet. 100m after setting off, the tuk-tuk swings into a propane station where the driver hops out, grabs a large propane tank and promptly secures it inside the front of the tuk-tuk with rope. Then off we go again, fully loaded and the little engine screaming with pain! Halfway we pull over, and without a word being said a lad comes out of a small house, grabs the propane and takes it inside.
The 2 other passengers end up being very chatty. English is clearly their main language. Looking at their rubber boots and machetes, they seem to be involved somehow in land work. They tell us that fruit is actually grown here, mangos, papaya, etc.
All in all, it was a very entertaining and rather surreal 2-mile ride, which will likely get clocked as one of those memories that will never be forgotten.
Back at the boat, we decide to head to the beach and do some snorkeling. The area around Michael’s Rock is supposed to be very good. And that turned out to be no understatement. In just a few feet of water is the most amazing coral garden with likely the highest density of purple coral fans we have ever seen. With the patches of sand between the coral covered in seagrass, you can imagine you are looking at a marine version of a well-manicured rockery garden, with small lawns in between.
Lots of fish too. Many with colours we have not seen before. And to think, we have the whole place to ourselves. Talking of which, there is no evidence of damaged coral which you so often see in popular tourist snorkeling sights. Plus, the coral looks extremely healthy with none of the usual signs of bleaching, which you so often see these days, due to global warming of the seas.
In the evenings we watch the sun disappear into the sea ….
